Hung on Powerlines
by Mahri Lellan
Summary: I'd take it kicking and screaming, but for you I'll keep my mouth shut. So, so bittersweet and battered. MelloxMatt, slightly Mattcentric. Rated M for abstract sex.
1. silence: end

"_Dad was an astronaut."_

Matt used to have dreams. Matt used to have big dreams.

"_Daddy was a cowboy."_

Now, he barely had a life.

"_Daddy's my hero."_

"Mail! Mail, where are you?"

Stifling his giggles, young Mail Jeevas failed to answer his mother. Though he often  
enjoyed staring at her and fathoming what his real dad looked like too, he more often took pleasure in hiding from her and making her scour the huge house for such a small boy. Never, though, did she put a maid on the job—she learned that this painstaking task was hers and hers alone after she'd sent one once; Mail had only dashed out the door when he saw her coming.

Mail was cramped into a closet, attempting to blow a mop out of his eyes when the door opened. He cringed at the light, having grown used to the darkness. "Mail, come out." His mother commanded him in her gentle but stern voice. Obediently, he pulled his orange-tinted goggles down over his photosensitive eyes again and tripped out of the utilities closet.

His mother's slender hands brushed the dust from his red hair, and he found his own attracted to hers. His child fingers toyed with the fine ends of her crimson hair, managing to tug slightly before she batted his hands away from her waist. "Mail, it's time for dinner," she told him, taking his hand before he could protest and pulling him to the dining room. Mail followed her without much protest, not saying a word; he was a generally quiet boy until he got to talking. Then, he'd never shut up.

For the time being, he was contented with gazing up at his mother, admiring her youthful, smooth features. He often likened his mother to a princess, fair and delicate with long, flowing hair. Just like in his video games. In his video games, his mother—the princess—and his father—the knight—always rode around the countryside together in perfect harmony.

Matt used to have dreams.

Mail had always been a clever boy. By the time he was about four or five, he'd put together the words 'bastard', 'hussy', and 'mistake' to figure out his origins. That, and his father wasn't an astronaut.

Or a cowboy.

Or a hero.

In fact, Mail's father was some guy out in the world who smoke, drank, and wasted his life away with a different woman every night. When Mail asked his mother what his father was like, all she would say was: "He smoked." Then, she'd grimace and put her hand on his shoulder and change the subject.

"Mom?" he ventured after one said occasion, looking carefully at the woman as though he could discern an answer to his question before he even asked it.

"Hmn?"

"What's a hussy?"

She stared at him for a long, long time before she enclosed him safely into her arms. She was silent for even a moment longer, squeezing him against her bosom before she spoke softly against his hair. "Don't worry about it. Worrying just makes trouble you don't need," she told him. He was safely encased in her soft embrace and despite his curiosity, the world slowly started to melt away. Mail decided then and there that he didn't need to ask the final and most important of his questions.

He wasn't a mistake.

Matt used to have big dreams.

When Mail was about five, he found a half-smoked cigarette lying in the gutter outside of his big, green yard. He'd been playing with numerous toys until he'd gotten bored and had taken to drawing with sidewalk chalk on the street. Now, he was messing around with a crushed carton of cigarettes and a battered, used one. He got up and tossed the stub aside, peering into the carton with one eye squinting shut behind his goggles. He smiled.

Precariously, Mail looked around the yard to make sure no one was watching him before he thrust the tattered packet into the pocket of his jeans and trotted off to his room. There, he procured a pack of matches that he had nicked from the kitchen. The smoke curling from the embers dancing on the match heads never failed to entertain him. This afternoon was no different.

Safely hidden behind the door of his bedroom and tucked underneath the bed just in case, Mail laid flat on his back and rummaged in his pocket for the crushed cigarette packet. Triumphantly, he retrieved the box and pulled out the only remaining cigarette. It was slightly battered and dirty, but it was otherwise unharmed. Mail struck the match and lit the cigarette.

He barely managed to snuff it out before coughing on it—his first breath had sent his lungs into a disagreeable fit that caused him immediate pain. More ensued when he instinctively crushed the cigarette into his fist, throwing it across the room like he did with candy that tasted awful. Coughing, he crawled out from under his bed, his eyes watering and his throat burning.

The maids heard him screaming for his mother; though a few of them had enough common sense to actually send for the lady of the household, Mail soon had a congregation of women he didn't want crowding around him. They pet his hair and held his shaking body despite his feeble attempts to ward them off between all his wheezing. If he had known that the cigarette was that potent he really wouldn't have done it—but he had figured… If his father smoked, why couldn't he? Every boy wanted to be like his daddy, even if he never knew him. Even if his mother looked pained every time his daddy was mentioned. Even if his daddy smoked.

Discouraged, he closed his blue-green eyes and waited, paying no attention to his heaving chest now that the coughing had subsided. It was long after his breathing evened out that he noticed no one was petting his hair anymore. The arms around him weren't gone, though—but now, they felt different. Mail opened his eyes.

"Hi, Mom."

A cough cracked his feeble words as he spoke them, eliciting a saddened smile from his mother. Her slender fingers held up a crunched cigarette between rose-painted nails. "Mail, what were you doing?" she questioned him, not in scorn or in that scolding parental way, but in genuine concern. It made him flush a furious red and look away to keep from embarrassing himself, but it was too late. She'd seen. "Mail… please, tell me what you were doing."

He shifted uncomfortably in her arms before he answered, but perhaps not as straight as she'd like him to. "Dad smoked, right?"

Slowly, she was putting this together. "Yes, he smoked," she admitted to him with so much shame that it was like it was her very own confession.

Mail sat up and looked at his mother carefully, blinking at her behind his tinted goggles and admiring how fair she looked even with the orange film his world was covered in. "I had to be better," he slowly started to explain. "You say that like he's bad 'cause he smoked… I wanted to be like him but good instead."

His mother said nothing. She ran her hands through his hair and took his hand, gently stroking the inside of his palm. When he flinched, she brought it out to show him the burns he'd inflicted when he crushed the cigarette in his bare hands. "Look, Mail," she told him softly, running her thumb down the side of his small hand. "Your father's not even here and he's hurting you. Promise me you won't do this again?"

"Promise." Mail curled his hand and stuck out his pinky, smiling just ever so slightly when his mother hooked her little finger with his and shook. "I pinky swear."

Now, he barely had a life.

Mail's safe, sound world was hammered apart when he was seven years old. Even though he was content and never asked for a thing more than he was given, even though he ate all his vegetables, even though he never mouthed back to the maids and butlers, someone decided to punish him.

When he was seven years old, Mail's mother succumbed to a dormant sickness in her body.

"Mom?"

Her voice was weak. "Hmn?"

"What's… what's a hussy?"

He couldn't ask her anything else on her deathbed. He couldn't ask her how the weather was; he couldn't ask why his father wasn't a cowboy. He had to ask her the thing that hurt her.

"Mail…"

"Never mind, Mom, it's okay. I looked it up."

She laughed at him then. He smiled, thinking that he'd done something good for her, but she only coughed heavily in response. He squeezed her hand. Mail didn't want her to talk about it now, even if he didn't really understand what the dictionary had told him.

"Mail, a hussy is a woman with no respect."

"But Mom, you have respect."

At this, she only quieted and closed her blue-green eyes. Mail followed suit. He waited, and waited, and waited, but his mother didn't ever return to the subject. Instead, she leaned up and kissed his forehead, adjusted his goggles, and went to sleep.

"_Daddy's a knight, and he saves all the princesses in the world."_

Mail was given to an orphanage after the funeral. Even before his mother's death, he'd been a relatively quiet boy; he now said next to nothing. He would nod if he was greeted, he would shake his head if he was offered something. He wandered through the orphanage without playing with the other kids, without arguing over vegetables, without asking for anything at all.

His studies were the only thing that he seemed to care more than an iota about. It wasn't true, though—books and video games were just really easy things to get distracted by. It was odd to see the red-headed boy hiding behind a novel, but everyone accepted it. It was easy to realize that all he ever did was listen to the material or read it once, and then he would leave everyone else to eat his dust. He often fell asleep in his classes, but eventually, the teachers gave up on ever getting him to pay attention for more than ten minutes at a time.

On his eighth birthday, though, someone came trudging through the snow and asked for him.

Mail had never been considered for adoption before—he'd always made a point of looking like the most boring, crude kid in the orphanage when unfinished families came to look. He didn't want to be adopted. He wanted to grow up and then leave the orphanage. He wanted to go out into the world and hope that his mother was being a princess up in heaven, and that his dad was riding up to see her some day.

However, this man didn't care that he was crude or boring. He didn't care that Mail didn't talk too much. He just smiled and introduced himself as Roger, laughing even when Mail called him an old windbag. He extended his hand to Mail, taking the child's own when he didn't do anything. "Mail," he stated slowly, in a low voice that enticed Mail to listen. He'd always liked secrets. "I'm going to take you somewhere special, is that okay with you?"

It was okay with him. Since Mom had died, he hadn't had a home anyway.


	2. 3, 2, 1 ready: go

"_That's why he's not here."_

Wammy's sparked something in Mail—thereon known as 'Matt'. It goaded him to actually do something with his perceptive, curious nature. Either it was the advanced orphanage, or the man lurking in the shadows. L. The Game Master. At least, that was what Matt always referred to him as.

The crashing and booming noises of simulated warfare echoed out of the recreation room, followed by cheers and laughter. "Get 'im, Matt, get 'im!" Matt had picked up video games again. In his big house with only his mother to keep him company, he'd had nothing to do when she wasn't around. Therefore, he'd immersed himself in whatever a little boy could do and had taken a particular liking to video games. By the time he'd turned four, games like Mortal Kombat were a piece of cake and not the slightest bit disturbing.

Matt chewed on the empty, tasteless end of a lollipop stick, jabbing the controller's buttons a few more times before the statistics screen came up, signaling the end of the game and the end of his turn. "Matt, keep playing!" A girl said, trying to coax him into using her turn, but he was already bored. That game had been in the recreation room for a few days now, and he'd already beaten it too many times for it to hold his interest anymore.

He wandered out of the room without a word, still chewing on his lollipop stick. Secretly, he was pretending that it was a cigarette. He wasn't old enough to get his hands on actual cigarettes yet—he was only nine, after all—but he liked to pretend. Even after his first ordeal when he was five, he still retained his solid reasoning; his father had smoked, and his father had been a bad man. He decided to accept this a long time ago. His father was not saving anyone. His father wasn't in space. His father was just a dumb old man out there somewhere, smoking away. Matt was trying to pretend that lollipop sticks were equal to cigarettes, but he, who smoked them, wasn't equal to his father.

"What're you watching me for?"

Matt nearly jumped—but instead, he looked up into the face of the blonde whom he'd been tailing for kicks. He wouldn't admit this, but this guy was one of the few people who held his interest in the orphanage. He was loud, he was bossy, and he was kind of annoying. And, he never ate his vegetables. Those kinds of things were the things that made his mother angry with him, so Matt didn't exactly understand why this guy acted that way, but he was keen to find out.

Matt shrugged.

"Jeeze, what are you, mute?" the other boy asked, reaching over and ripping his cigarette—his lollipop stick—out of his mouth. Like this was really going to make him talk, oh yeah.

"No."

Or not.

He blinked his blue-green eyes for a couple seconds before sitting back and sliding his palms behind him. They were out in the court yard—it was a nice day out, but Matt didn't really care for being outdoors. He'd just been following this guy. That was all.

"Mello, right?" Matt asked, surprising himself again. He seemed to surprise Mello too, but for different reasons.

"What the—how do you know my name? I don't know you, kid."

Matt shrugged. Mello was ranked second by the orphanage's standards, only one rung above Matt. He'd always taken care of knowing whoever was in second place—because if he wasn't careful, he'd accidentally surpass them, or something. Mello, however, had given him a run for his money. Matt wasn't sure if he could surpass Mello if he tried.

"I'm Matt."

"Yeah, whatever."

"I'm not a kid."

"You're a kid to me."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Because I say so, now shut up."

Matt shut up, watching as Mello pulled out a crumpled foil rectangle from his pocket. He unwrapped it and licked the bite marks already on the chocolate bar, snapping off another piece with his teeth. After a while, though, Mello again grew wary of the eyes on him, deciding then to reach over, pinch the bridge of Matt's goggles, and snap them into his face. Matt cringed, squeezing his eyes shut, but before he could protest, Mello was gone.

"_Don't worry about it. Worrying just makes trouble you don't need."_

Even though Mello's attitude was consistently spiteful towards him, Matt never failed to show up wherever Mello was. They could be considered friends. At first, Mello accepted the red-head's company grudgingly, but soon he came to appreciate it. To some degree. He'd never admit that—not at knife point, not at gunpoint, not ever; unless it came to his chocolate stash. Then he might mumble something about how Matt was at least nice to have around to bitch at.

It was one such occasion that it came to Mello that he and Matt really were friends, despite what either of them thought. Matt didn't think of such sentimentalities because he didn't want to get too close to people, Mello could tell. Mello didn't want to think about having friends because he was too used to being alone, too used to handling himself, Matt could tell. Either way, though, the result was that they had come to an unspoken agreement: they were friends to the end. Best friends, even.

"I hate Near."

This conversation was nothing new.

Matt didn't even look up from his videogame as he answered Mello. "What'd he do this time?" he acknowledged as Mello stormed into his room and kicked a small pile of dirty clothes at the foot of his bed. Destructive as always, the blonde started throwing his pillows and blankets down onto the floor for no apparent reason.

Seething, Mello railed off, punching the naked mattress. "Everyone thinks he's so frickin' great. Near this, Near that, oh just DO ME, NEAR!" He yelled, throwing his words towards the door as though the white-haired boy was walking past to hear his words and heed them. Fortunately, there wasn't any indication to Near's being there.

Matt waited the fit out until Mello's rage had been reduced to mumbling about how Near had one-upped him in one way or another, disproving him or something. Matt honestly wasn't paying attention; he was too used to this. So much so, actually, that he hadn't done more than look up and pause his game for a second when Mello had assaulted him with a goose-feather pillow.

"You finished?" he asked after Mello started pacing around his room, huffing disagreeably, but otherwise quiet.

The blonde threw him a dirty scowl, staring at him to dare him to say something else. Their eyes remained viciously locked for a moment before Mello finally softened and growled a resenting 'yeah'.

"Good," Matt responded noncommittally and returned to his video game, only to save his progress and turn it off. He got up and walked over to the bedside table, opening the drawer and reaching into a back corner. "Here," he offered Mello, having pulled out a fresh bar of chocolate.

Mello glanced at him in the way people ordinarily said thank you and took a seat on the bed. Matt, ignoring the general chaos around him and the fact that his bed no longer looked too comfortable, sat down beside him. For a while, they shared each other's company with an awkward silence that only the occasional snap of Mello's chocolate broke. Somewhere outside of the room, children's voices sang out with cheerful laughter.

"Why don't we ever do that?"

The gamer looked over at his current companion, blinking slowly at him in utter surprise. He hadn't expected Mello to say much of anything. "Do what?" he questioned finally, unable to think of anything else.

"Laugh."

The red-head blinked in confusion. "We do," he pointed out. He couldn't recall a specific time where they had laughed as easily as the kids outside had; he could think of snorts and sniggers from Mello mainly at his misfortune… But he was sure they had laughed some time.

Mello gave a rueful smile that seemed all too melancholy. "No, we don't."

Matt stared off at a spot just beyond his nose, trying to think of something to say to prove Mello wrong, or… He didn't even know what he was trying to think of anymore. He'd reached the point where he was just staring. "I guess not…" he finally forced himself to admit. Mello was right. Not that there was anything wrong with Mello being right, he just hadn't ever thought of them never laughing. "Don't worry about it," he stated after a while, almost in monotone. "Worrying just makes trouble you don't need." His words came by rote, but despite the banality, Mello looked over at him and sucked thoughtfully at the corner of his chocolate bar.

"Who says I'm worrying?" he demanded after a while, his tone insinuating that there hadn't been a long, contemplative pause. Matt only shrugged. Another long, deliberate silence reigned for a total of three and a half minutes before Mello spoke again. "Why…" For once, words failed him and forced him to start over. "Why do you put up with me?" he interrogated, his words sharp and hard to eliminate the sentimentality. Matt only shrugged again. The blonde chomped off another bite of chocolate in a highly put off manner.

"I guess I like you."

Mello stopped.

Dark, topaz eyes slowly swiveled to stare the younger boy down, challenging him like he was jerking Mello's leg. He, apparently, wasn't, because all he did under the threatening glare was to stare off into space. Finally, Mello sighed and resigned to leave Matt alone.

After a while, the uncanny sight of the bare mattress started to get under Mello's skin. He pushed Matt off the bed and sentenced him to a corner of the room to keep him out of the way as he, quite casually and messily replaced the sheets and pillows that he had recklessly thrown from the bed. Finally, he stopped and looked over his handiwork, which looked to be little more than a mountain of Matt's bedding. "Thanks," Matt stated blandly without sounding appreciative at all. In response, Mello just snorted and threw the remainder of his chocolate bar at his friend. The wasted candy was no loss; Mello pulled out a fresh one from Matt's bedside drawer.

Without inviting the gamer back to his bed, Mello sprawled out on it, deliberately taking up as much space as possible. He stared up at the Zelda poster taped to the ceiling, scowling at Matt's trivial taste past his chocolate bar. He, though, secretly envied how carefree Matt could be while still retaining a high rank. Matt's uncommitted nature infuriated him, but he couldn't help keeping the other around. "Matt?" he finally spoke up, stalling.

"Yeah?"

"You're…" Mello angrily snapped off another piece of chocolate, occupying himself with it as best as he could to cover up his bothersome lack of words. "You're not just a kid to me."


	3. false starts mean better friends

_"Mom's not really dead, she's a princess. Princesses never die."_

A long time passed before Matt told Mello his secret theory. A longer time passed afterwards. Mello had shot down this idea, digging into Matt's fears of the truth. When he finally mustered the courage to come back to Mello and tell him off, the blonde shut him up with a good whack to the back of the head.

"Shut your mouth and come here."

Matt felt a severe case of déjà vu—they were walking out through the court yard again. Mello was in front and Matt was a good distance behind, squinting slightly due to the sun. His goggles helped, but not by much. He mussed his hair up so that his bangs helped to shield his eyes. The result was that he tripped over an abandoned bicycle and fell on his face.

Mello whirled around, taking a second to look before he found Matt on the ground. Scowling, he grabbed Matt by the wrist and proceeded to pull him up, slap the dirt off of him, and drag him the rest of the way to their destination. He cussed all the while.

Finally, they ended up in a shaded alcove behind the orphanage, hidden from the rest of the grounds by an inconspicuous cluster of weeping willows. There was a bench smack dab in the clearing, covered in curling, vine-like weeds. Matt found it clear that not too many people had been coming back here.

"My mom's not dead."

Matt looked up. "… What?"

"My mom's not dead," Mello repeated with outstanding patience in his voice. It was either patience, or extreme irritation—Matt was never really good with telling that kind of thing. "You told me your mom wasn't dead because you thought mine was."

Matt didn't have anything to say to that. It was true.

"Mother didn't want me."

Matt didn't have anything to say to that either.

Mello let go of the red-head's wrist, moving ahead to sit down on the desecrated bench and lean back onto the palms of his hands. His amber eyes gazed at the sweeping arms of the willow trees, seemingly showing that he was drifting off in thought. Apparently, this was true; Mello nearly smacked Matt again out of surprise when the younger sat down next to him. "Why didn't your mother want you?" Matt questioned brashly. His mom had always been the kindest woman to him and he'd loved her. She put up with him when no one else would; she defended him when he caused trouble. She'd died wanting him and no one else at her side.

The blonde, however, was not so fortunate or blessed. Somehow, the idea either didn't sit well with Matt, or just wasn't comprehensible to him. Mello wasn't so understanding either. "How the hell should I know?" he snapped at Matt, a scowl settling over his lips. His expression was so hard that he looked to be made of stone, impassive and unmoving.

"You're lying."

"What?"

"You're lying. You wouldn't have said anything if you didn't want to talk about it. So, you know," Matt pointed out, his voice bland as though he was pointing out the colour of Mello's shirt.

The older boy scowled, resisting the temptation to, yet again, slap Matt in the back of the head. He wasn't used to anyone hitting him so dead on except for Near, and to hear such definite statements from some idiot kid was a little more than infuriating. "My mom didn't want me because she just didn't, okay?" he answered curtly, hoping that the red-head would get the point and shut up. He didn't.

"Why just didn't she?" he questioned again, balancing his elbow against his knee and propping his head up on his hand. He proceeded to pointedly stare at Mello after pulling a sucker from his pocket and unwrapping it.

The blonde heaved an exasperated sigh before he reached over and ripped the lollipop from Matt's mouth, nearly taking a couple of teeth along with it. "Shut up. You don't make any sense anyway."

"I do so," the younger boy argued, taking back his candy and deftly sticking it into his mouth. "Just tell me why."

"You're a persistent little fucker, aren't you?" Mello questioned, although it wasn't really a question. It was more of an 'unfriendly inquiry'. It didn't seem as though Matt really cared what anyone called it, though—he was just shocked to hear that kind of word come out of a ten-year-old's mouth. Taking advantage of the other's complete and utter dumbfounded situation, Mello blurted out an answer. "My mom didn't want me because I'm a bastard kid." He said this so quickly that normal ears wouldn't have been able to catch the words, much less comprehend them. Matt, however, wasn't exactly two steps away from normal. In fact, he was so far away from it that he understood the blonde perfectly.

"Yeah? Well, your mom's a bitch because so am I and _mine _loved _me_."

Silence.

It was almost as though Matt was waiting for Mello's approval in that moment. Approval that they were one and the same, in a way. Approval that he was cool enough—or at least, on the same level. Approval that they could be friends, could be brothers, even, in a sort of ambiguous way. The way Mello looked at him, though, he figured that he didn't really need the approval.It was that day that Mello and Matt discovered they had a couple things in common: foul mouths and retard fathers.

--------------

**Author's Note:** Due to a busily planned weekend and a relatively short chapter, I decided to update early this week. I might update again this Saturday, but don't count on it. Otherwise, check back on Dec. 8th for the next chapter. (:


	4. cathedrals sceaming SANCTUARY

"_No, my dad isn't an astronaut either."_

Matt and Mello were sitting in Matt's bedroom, Mello polishing off his umpteenth chocolate bar while Matt played some game on his old Nintendo 64. Even though Matt was in love with keeping up to date on the latest gaming systems he like any true gamer, was a sucker for old school.

"Turn that down," the blonde demanded of his current company, trying to complete his school work between bites of chocolate. He, after all, couldn't be like Matt and slack his way through the ranks. Besides, the only one ahead of him was Near and he'd be damned if anyone could slack their way past that guy. He watched to make sure that Matt turned down the volume—which he did, although quite reluctantly.

The red-headed boy continued to guide Mario across the screen, never looking up while he held a conversation with Mello. "Why don't you do your work in your room?" he asked, almost curiously—although Matt wasn't really the type to get curious anymore. It was far too bothersome and being curious hadn't ever gotten him anywhere anyway.

"Because Near's in there," the blonde answered impatiently. And he thought Matt was smart. His answer was supposed to be obvious—anyone who even knew his name knew that he couldn't stand Near.

"So?"

"He drives me crazy."

"Isn't that the point?" Matt questioned, finally pausing the game to peer at Mello quizzically. "Isn't it supposed to make you guys competitive or something?" They were, after all, waging a battle for the right to succeed the famous L. Supposedly, sharing a room was supposed to serve as a daily reminder of their notable challenge, wasn't it?

The blonde scowled, taking his irritation out on his chocolate bar by way of a harsh bite. "It works too well," he scathingly stated, scratching away at his work as Matt gave up on civil conversation and went back to his game. After a while, though, his short attention span shunned playing and he turned the consol off. Rolling onto his back, he pulled a sucker out of his pocket and twirled it around on his tongue for a while, enjoying the tang of the candy.

"Why is everything about Near?" Matt ventured without warning, trailing off in case he was walking into dangerous territory, which he was pretty sure that he was. He knew full well that the blonde hated Near with a passion, but he couldn't understand why.

Mello glared at the other like he considered him dumb—at the moment, he did. "Because he's number one, dumbass," he snapped, his expression twitching into pure hatred even as he said it.

"And that's where you want to be?"

His answer was curt. "Of course."

"Why?"

"Why?" Mello repeated incredulously. "_Why_? Are you more of a dumbfuck than I think you are? Because I have to be. I have to prove myself." Even with the explanation, Matt didn't quite follow.

"… Why?" he asked again, wincing with the new curses Mello threw in. They weren't particularly scathing, but coming out of a peer's mouth, they were slightly unnerving.

"Because!" the blonde spat at him. "Because I'm a bastard kid and no one wants a bastard. Everyone thinks I'm a no-good idiot like my slut mother and my jackass father, that's why. I have to prove myself to them and I have to be the best, or else it just doesn't matter," Mello confessed, his words rolling from his tongue like he'd been meaning to say them for years. "I've got to be the best because I've got drive and I don't know what else I'd do with it. I've got to be the best because it gives me a reason to live because it's a goal. Why the hell don't you get that and what the hell do you mean, 'why'?" Angered, the blonde flung his papers at Matt, assaulting him with a blizzard of school work.

"You should just leave me the fuck alone if you don't understand!" he shouted, hurling his pencil at the other as well. Matt, by now, had both arms up and was trying to defend himself from Mello's explosive attacks; but he didn't say anything. He just let Mello go, even when Mello got up and grabbed him by the roots of his red hair and shook him. "Why do you have to keep asking me 'why'? Why do you have to keep bothering me, huh?" Somehow, Matt didn't think that Mello was exactly talking about him anymore. "Why? How do you like that, why? Why? How do you like it when someone keeps asking you the same fucking question about what you don't want to talk about? I don't want to talk about myself! I don't know myself well enough to talk about myself!"

In a harsh, downward swing of his arm, Mello shoved his companion down to the ground and got down on his knees, punching Matt in the jaw as soon as he opened his mouth. "Shut up!" he countered, his voice wavering. He was crying. "I don't want to hear about how you're so much fucking better than me because your mother loved you and your father was a fucking cowboy and you know so much more about yourself and you're so cool with the world!"

He was still crying.

His fists against Matt's face and chest were weak since his fingers were barely clenched together. The tears streaming down his cheeks were strong. Mello sat back on his heels and silently fought the torrent of emotion. He didn't wipe his cheeks and eyes, though. That was just a sign that he was failing. Matt, though, didn't seem to follow that reasoning. Gently, he took his sleeve and dried what he could of his friend's face.

"It's okay," he stated sullenly, his words a little fuddled. The lollipop had crushed against his teeth when Mello had punched him and the resulting cut up inside of his cheek made it hurt to talk. He wanted Mello to cry, though. He wanted to be able to comfort him. He wanted to be a good friend, because of all the things he was… He'd never been a friend. Not really. And as far as things went for Mello, Matt didn't think that Mello had ever _had_ a friend. Not really.

Things were okay now, though. Matt could tell. With his body being sore and his scalp still faintly throbbing in pain, with the elder's tears soaking his shirt, with his arms wrapped tightly around Mello, he could tell that things were okay.

For once, everything was okay.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Sorry this updated so late in the day, guys. I had a pretty spontaneous weekend.I hope you enjoyed the chapter even if I might have broken character a bit. - Mahri. 


	5. God save your children

Sometimes, you just know when all the lights are out in the world.

When Mello left the orphanage, Matt felt completely alone. He was surrounded by people he might call friends—but they were just acquaintances and he knew that. For days, Matt wandered around looking for the blonde, looking for his chocolate, bringing bars of it back to the room to wait for when Mello would come and spend time there doing nothing. But he knew his friend wasn't around. Mello hadn't told him that he was leaving, but he knew. When the kids found out that L was dead, they all knew that things were going to change. Matt knew that Mello doing something drastic would be one of those things. Mello leaving, though, wasn't exactly something that Matt had foreseen.

"Matt, they got a new video game in the recreation room," a voice from his door way told him. Linda lingered for a moment before disappearing when Matt failed to lift his head or otherwise acknowledge her presence or news.

After he was sure that she'd left, he pulled out the bar of chocolate that he'd been hiding underneath the sheets. He resumed eating it. Kids at Wammy's weren't idiots; they were, after all, complete geniuses. Anyone would understand in heartbeat that Matt was eating chocolate because he had a stupid complex—he missed Mello and couldn't let him go. Or, he wouldn't let him go. Either option brought an annoyed scowl to Matt's lips. He, like Mello, didn't want to be weak. He didn't want to prove himself to anyone but himself, but he did want to be better than a bastard child. He wanted to be as good as his mother and better than his father. He had understood Mello and his rage… He just hadn't ever said anything. It was a tacit understanding.

He was thirteen now—still too young to leave the orphanage himself, but that wouldn't stop him from stealing away if he thought it fitting. He contemplated it a lot—maybe if he went, he could help Mello do whatever it was he was doing. Prove himself. That kind of thing. Maybe they both could prove themselves… Mostly, though, Matt figured that he was being the dumbfuck Mello thought he was. He thought he was being too sentimental and too childish and hopeful—if Mello had left without telling him, he probably didn't want Matt around. The thought almost hurt, but Matt wasn't the sort to dwell long enough on something like that for it to sting. He was too 'cool with the world'.

Sighing, Matt closed his eyes, the corner of a half-eaten chocolate bar still melting on his lips. He was too lethargic to get up and close the door, too uninterested to get up and play games, too tired to get up and look for someone he knew wasn't there. He didn't want to sleep, he didn't want to eat, and he didn't want to taste this stupid chocolate complex of his. But he did that anyways.

"_Please don't leave me—please! Don't go!"_

"_Please don't leave me—please!"_

"_Don't… don't go…"_

"Matt, wake up."

The voice that roused him from his sleep was as stern as the hands that shook him awake. Heart hammering in his chest, begging to be let out, Matt woke with a start to find Linda and Near standing by his bed with one of the orphanage women standing over him. Linda looked like she was about to cry, Near looked indifferent, and the woman looked concerned. Slowly, it dawned on Matt that he was being a weak idiot in his sleep—having nightmares, sleep talking.

He fought the small congregation away, licking his dry lips but with no avail; his tongue was sandpaper. "I'm getting some water," he grumbled tersely and left his room before any of them could protest.

The hallway lights made his weak eyes water. Ignoring it for the most part, he hung his head like a shamed dog with his tail tucked between his legs and kept his eyes half-lidded. His lips trembled more than he could help and he soon found himself wondering whether he was tearing up because of the florescent lights or something else.

He heard the voice before he heard the soft feet padding along behind him. The voice was close to unfamiliar, but he knew the tread better. "Matt," Near said, only to be ignored. "Matt," he repeated, as patient as he always was, his tone of voice never changing. It was still monotonous and sagely; it soon became apparent why Near's voice drove Mello up the wall. In fact, it was starting to do the same to Matt.

"What do you want?" he snapped, not looking back at the other.

"I have your goggles." Near seemed to be unfazed by Matt's uncannily Mello-like attitude. He shouldn't have expected anything less. Whirling around, Matt's blue-green eyes glared hard at the pale boy, trying to get him to turn back and go away—but he didn't. He snatched the goggles back and put them on, assuming that Near would be gone when he looked back up, but he was wrong. Again. With a growl, Matt turned on his heel and stomped off again. Sadly, his angry pace wasn't very potent because he wasn't wearing any shoes.

"I miss him too, you know."

Matt nearly fell over. "What the hell do you mean?" he demanded in an effort to play dumb. He didn't really want to hear Near talk, but he was also tired of mourning the loss of his friend alone. Not that Mello was dead, but to Matt, he was as good as dead for these three months past. Fuck Mello for leaving him. Matt hadn't ever been as fond of curse words as his friend, but at the moment he wasn't even going to chastise himself. He really meant it. Fuck him.

Near twirled a curl of white hair around his index finger as he spoke, staring off in some direction that wasn't at Matt. "Mello," he stated as though he was explaining why the sky was blue to a child. "I miss him too."

"He hated you."

"I know."

"You weren't even friends with him."

"You don't have to be friends with someone for him to affect you."

Near had him there. Matt huffed in his defeat and continued to storm along down the hallways like a quiet, wannabe twister. He didn't have the heart to slam doors and terrorize people in the middle of the night, so he just fumed alone. Actually, he had Near, but Near didn't count.

They stalked along in silence for a long while, so long, in fact, that Matt had forgotten what any of his intentions were and nearly had to ask Near what they were doing outside before he realized that he'd been heading for the willow trees where Mello had first paid any real attention to him at.

He growled at the silent revelation, wondering if he ought to continue and let Near follow him to the sacred spot. Well, it wasn't so special, but Matt would like to think that it meant something to both him and Mello—but he was probably lying to himself. "Fuck it," he muttered under his breath, stomping along the grounds until he reached the bench. He nearly tripped over it, but managed to sit down before he made an absolute fool of himself. The rustling of the quiet willow branches behind him made it known that Near had, indeed, followed him. Near sat down on the end of the stone seat.

"I never knew this place was here," he commented softly, almost as though he was making some sort of effort for civil conversation.

Matt relished a little in knowing something that Near didn't, even if Mello had known it first. Actually, that just made the fact a little more enjoyable. "Yeah, me and Mello came here a lot," he said nonchalantly, although he had a feeling that he was saying it partially to make Near jealous. If this was working, though, he couldn't really be sure; the other was unreadable as ever.

Silence befell the two boys for a long while. Matt didn't really understand why Near was sitting with him, and quite frankly, he found it really, really strange. He wasn't used to anyone sitting beside him on this bench but Mello, but he was sure that the sensation had been the same for Mello when he had first shown Matt this place. "Why are you here?" he asked, knowing full well that his question was very ambiguous, but he figured Near was intelligent enough to know what he was referring to.

"Because I know you're one of the few people here who care about Mello," Near answered honestly, staring up at the moon that they could just see beyond the crown of trees. "You're his friend. You genuinely care about him and his well-being; you want him to succeed so he'll be happy because you know what his life was and is like."

Matt's response was immediate and completely uncalculated. "What about you?" He, unlike Mello, was completely unperturbed by the fact that Near had hit him so dead on.

"I… don't really know," Near admitted finally, sounding like the weight of the confession was crushing him. "By all means, I'm the opposite of that. I'm not his friend, I don't care about him, and I'm in the way of him being number one, aren't I?"

"You got that right."

They sat again in silence, forgetting exactly what they wanted to say. Matt found that Near's way of speaking was kind of nice after he'd gotten used to it—the soft, solid, rather articulate manner was a welcome comfort to the boisterous thoughts that had settled in his head since Mello had left. But he wasn't going to say that. "So, you didn't really answer my question," he stated finally, realizing that Near hadn't. "Why would you want to see me just because I care about Mello?"

Near stared up at the darkened sky for a long while before he turned his eyes onto Matt, "Look at me," he requested when he noticed that Matt was doing his very best to keep his gaze averted. Matt grudgingly looked at him. His eyes were too much like Mello's; the gray was entirely different from the gold that he was so accustomed to, but the both of them looked like they held the same secrets. Jaded, tired, aspiring.

The gamer sighed, adjusting his goggles over his own eyes, suddenly wary of how hidden they were all the time. All the better. "What?"

"I want to ask you a favor."

Matt rolled his eyes. It was just like Near to draw this out as long as possible. "So ask me," he told the other impatiently.

"I want you to get out of the orphanage."

He stopped.

"What?" he finally managed to ask; he'd thought of that on his own, but he'd never figured that Near would come to him and say that.

"Mello's rash and he's ambitious. He'll go by any means to get where he wants to be and it's going to get him into trouble," Near explained like he thought that Matt wasn't intelligent enough to gather this on his own; he wasn't third for nothing. Second now, actually. "I can't leave," he said matter-of-factly, but left the statement otherwise open-ended. "And even if I did, that would make you number one and I'm sure you don't want that." This only earned a scoff from the older boy. It didn't take a genius to figure that one out either. "So you need to go. You don't want to deal with the ranking here anyways, do you?" It was a rhetorical question, apparently, because the light-haired boy just continued on. "Leave as soon as possible. Don't tell Roger you're going because you're still too young… but age is only a number."

The thirteen-year-old considered this for a moment before finally standing up, looking awkwardly at Near for a moment. "Why do you want me to watch him?" he questioned after boiling the other's valiant speech down to the point.

Near shrugged; it was an honest shrug, too, not the kind that Mello usually gave when he didn't want to talk about something. "I'm not sure," he replied, looking down at his bare feet in the green grass. His toes absently curled against the yielding blades. "I guess, when someone's become a part of your life like he has, you don't want anything to happen to him."

Matt laughed. "You want someone to compete with."

"In a way."

His wry grin faltered a moment like a flickering bulb before completely going out. "If something happened to him," he started again, slightly gentler this time, "there would be a big piece of your life just gone."

Near nodded.

Whether Mello was friend or foe to them didn't matter. Either way, he'd been too big a part of shaping who they were, what they did, where they were going. Matt considered this until it fully made sense to him, at which time he extended his hand to the other. Rather shyly, Near took it and gave it a little shake. Well, this was goodbye. Matt considered saying something to show that he understood exactly how Near felt; worried, scared of the gaping hole that would be left behind if Mello really left for good… But he kept his mouth shut. Near knew. He could tell.

"You and Mello are so alike it's damn scary," he finally decided, knowing that he ought to say something to serve as his goodbye. The other looked at him curiously for a moment before slowly shrugging. Maybe he saw the similarities, maybe he didn't. Personally, Matt didn't really see anything, it was just… a feeling.

He turned on his heel and walked out of the safe embrace of the willows. The air on the grounds was strikingly cool as Matt headed back into Wammy's to pack a single bag; he only took his GameBoy Advance and SP, the remainder of his lollipops, and a bar of Hershey's. Everything else, he trusted Near to get rid of.

Stalking out of the orphanage, he gave it the one last glance that Mello had deprived it. "There goes being a kid." Stepping beyond those iron gates meant stepping straight into adulthood. There wasn't time to mess around when you were dealing with a serial killer. He had nothing but his few relics to take with him, but to be quite frank… Matt hated the taste of chocolate.

* * *

Hey there again. Did you expect to see Near? XD Another busy weekend planned ahead, what with Christmas coming up and whatnot. So I hope you enjoyed another early chapter. Next week will probably be early too, since I'm going out of town. Geeze, I'm uploading way faster than I can write.. at this rate, it'll take me forever to get new chapters up.. 


	6. rules of the game

_Don't worry._

Matt was thirteen. Thirteen-year-olds didn't have too much luck; they couldn't get settled, they couldn't get a job, they couldn't do much but go to school. School, however, was about as absurd as things got for someone who basically didn't exist. Wammy's had taken care of all his existing files before, and then Near had taken care of his files at Wammy's. Matt was no one. Anonymous. Even Mello, whom Matt knew Near had neglected to erase, wasn't this invisible.

The quirks of being nobody didn't make things easy for him as a kid, though. He ended up boarding with a few runaways if he could get the chance, falling back to his old habits of keeping to himself. He and others smoked cigarettes to keep warm—he didn't really see how it helped, but he did it anyway; one, to keep the myth alive, and two, to keep the memory of his father and his princess mother fresh. The days of lollipops were long since gone, and yet, Matt still clung to the idea of being better than his father ever could be, even when he was sleeping in a ditch. He never said much, so no one ever found out who he was. His name he rarely gave; not even his alias. He liked being nonexistent too much.

Finally, Matt found what he could call a home. Wammy's was something like a bridge to him, a challenge, a competition. He'd had a bed there and he'd had Mello—but it wasn't home. When Matt was sixteen, he managed to happen upon a group of underground hackers. They were selling chips, systems, files. It was like a ridiculous, hi-tech, futuristic organized crime organization. It was like Heaven.

Matt was what they innocently called the treasurer. He siphoned money out of electronic banking accounts to fuel their systems, to finance their less-than-legal projects. It was an easy job, and he found himself doing things like creating game systems and hacking businesses and small government firms for 'fun'. It kept his hands busy. More importantly, it kept his mind busy.

"_You're lower than trash."_

"What are you doing?"

Matt jumped, whirling around to see a green-eyed, brown-haired young man, probably no more than four years older than himself. Behind him, his computer was whirring away, seemingly doing its job. He didn't say anything as the man came closer, stooping low to scan his eyes over the coding. Matt found himself silently and desperately praying that his new company wasn't versed in the language, but was sadly disappointed.

"Stealing?" he asked after scanning over the cods flitting across the monitor.

Matt took a drag off his cigarette more or less to steady his nerves. "All the time." His swift answer was an attempt to be witty, seeing as, after all, stealing was his actual job with these guys.

"From here, dipshit."

His mouth was dry and when he ground his teeth, making him feel like there were grains of sand between them as he took another subtly shaking inhale. "From the source," he finally stated. Exhale. In essence, it was the same thing. If he stole from the source, the hackers couldn't get as much money without being noticed. He hoped that the man would overlook this—but he didn't have any such luck.

"Yeah? Embezzling, huh? How old are you, kid? Who taught you to play this dirty?"

Matt found that this was something of an ironic question; one being that the man hardly seemed at the age to call him 'kid', if not the position, and two being that he hadn't ever really 'played dirty' before he started working for the group. A cracking slap across the face woke the red head from his thoughts. He grimaced, but didn't retaliate. This guy was wiry, but the gamer knew him. He had strength like you wouldn't believe what for his stature and all. Matt opened his mouth to defend himself, but the man cut him off.

"The name's Trey. Cut me in, and I'll cut you a break."

Slowly, Matt smiled.

Using each other is the name of the game.

The word spread like wildfire. Honestly, at first, Matt was scared. He thought that word would reach the higher-ups, but somehow, people knew how to keep the fire contained enough. It smoked out the rats, those who were too good to try and steal without getting caught. By the end of three months, Matt was pulling money from twenty different accounts all over the world, giving thirty people cake to keep them happy. In turn, no one touched him. People appeased him. They laid out their coats to keep him clean. If Matt went down, he pulled down a vast network of finances with him; all the money, all the provisions, the gates that kept them safe—Matt was a keystone. Pull him down, the company went down.

Matt found himself sitting comfortably in what used to be a tiny warehouse. It suited him, though; it had no circulation except for the fans near the ceiling, but Matt didn't mind. It was a powerhouse for his numerous computers and screens. His work was separated from his play; his games and his laptops all within an arm's reach. He was one very happy kid.

Though, there was that Mello thing nagging at the back of his mind. He'd made a promise to Near—but more importantly, he'd made a promise to himself. Mello wouldn't die. Matt would give his life for Mello before his friend died. Once he got the resources, he started the man hunt. Traces, leads. Find Kira, find Near, find where they met, and he'd get Mello.

It was a grueling search, but finally, Matt managed to find the mafia.

"Give the phone to Mello," he stated squarely into his cell. He could hear the discomfort on the other end—who was he, and how did he know about Mello? "Now." He demanded, sounding far savvier than he actually felt. It was one thing to track Mello down, it was another to actually manage to get a hold of him.

"_Who the fuck is this?"_

Matt could have laughed. The last time he heard Mello, the blonde had barely gotten past puberty. Now he sounded pissed, aggressive, and harsh. Where was the bastard kid he knew? Where was the ambition?

"Three guesses."

"_I'm not going to play fucking games. Tell me who you are,"_ Mello demanded, his voice sounding strained with anger. Matt tsked, Mello's emotions always had a handle on him. That, at least, was one thing that hadn't changed. He could hear chocolate snapping between Mello's words. These familiarities broke Matt's resolve—he could toy with Mello, or he could get some answers.

"Why the hell did you leave? You could have told me, you fucking asshole," he quietly accused, his voice lowered not because anyone was listening, but because he had to or else the frustration mounting in his lungs would make him start shouting.

Silence.

"_Matt?"_

More silence.

"Hey, Mello."

_Click._

"Mello?"

Matt scowled. "The bastard hung up on me!"

Some things never change.

Mello called Matt the next day, much to Matt's surprise. "Hello?" he questioned, picking up the restricted number with some hesitation. He, however, was only vaguely surprised to hear a snap of chocolate on the other line. "Mel'," he greeted almost savagely, his severe tone of voice not affecting the other on the opposite line in the slightest. "Why did you hang up yesterday?"

"_Why didn't you call back?"_

"I didn't know you wanted me to."

"_Then, I didn't know you wanted me to stay on." _

Matt scowled, knowing that he should have really expected this kind of treatment from Mello. He'd always had a sharp tongue and even though the gamer would like to think that he was the blonde's friend, Mello had never been partial to him and used his smart mouth just as brutally as ever.

"_You better say something if you don't want me to hang up again."_

"Shut up, Mello," Matt tried, knowing that this probably wouldn't convince Mello to stay on the line, but he couldn't think of anything else that he genuinely wanted to say. Finally, he softened a bit—or at least, he exhaled and seemed to breathe out every qualm he had with Mello at the moment. "You wanted me to call?" he asked, never having fathomed that.

"_I didn't say that."_

The defensive air of Mello's voice was apparent. Matt laughed, earning a curse from his old friend on the other line. "I knew I missed that hard ass of yours," he commented airily, only to receive incoherent mumbling in his ear that was probably something akin to 'I do not have a hard ass'. "So," Matt finally said, trying to strike up conversation. Resuming casual talk with Mello after four years was a lot harder than he would have thought. "What have you been up to?"

"_Shouldn't you know?"_

Matt sighed. Yeah, he did know. After all, he wouldn't have been able to find Mello if he hadn't known about what the other had been doing and of his whereabouts. "Fine, then, how've you been?"

"_How the hell do you think I've been?"_ A moment's pause. _"More or less all right,_" Mello grudgingly answered, as though he wasn't used to civil conversation. Given that he was in cohorts with the mafia, Matt would have to guess that this was in truth a good bet.

"Geeze, can't I get a 'hey Matt, how are you, what have you been doing since I abandoned your sorry ass?'"

"_No._"

This conversation was quickly growing short-lived. Mello still seemed to have a stick shoved up his ass—but even farther than since they'd been kids. Matt sighed, leaning back against the couch he was currently sprawled over. His booted foot jiggled idly by his handheld, which was still beeping away. He ignored it. "Fine. Can I come see you?"

"_No._" The answer was just as flat as the last time.

"… Fine." Matt assented, hanging up on Mello like the other had done to him previously. He'd never been good at following directions or heeding guidelines, and he had a feeling if he had said anything about that, Mello would have packed up and left. He didn't know why the other was so adamant about not seeing him, but that just made him want to go even more. The gamer knew that Mello probably realized this, too, and thusly—despite the fact that it was about two in the morning—Matt grabbed his keys, a pack of cigarettes, his cell phone, and headed out.

* * *

**AN**: Here we are with another early chapter since I'll be out of town this weekend. Phewww this updating thing is catching up to me fast. - With extreme luck and motivation, I'll be able to keep updating once a week. We'll see how that goes... Thanks to those of you who continuously support me. I really do like hearing feedback and I'm glad to see you like my story. Enjoy your holidays, guys. 


	7. the face of bombs and bullets

_Others do [change._

Mello was sitting with his long legs stretched out across several cushions of a leather couch, contemplating the fact that he and Matt had just had two phone conversations when he hadn't actually had a _conversation_ on the phone since… Since a long time. He didn't really remember.

He closed his eyes with a labored sigh; he knew that Matt would probably come hunt him down within the week and therefore he would have to move base sooner or later. Sooner, though, was sooner than he thought.

"Mello, do you know this guy?" A lower-ranked member came into the room, obviously feeling more suave than he actually was because he was pushing a certain seventeen-year-old ahead of him with the barrel of his gun pressed against the back of a certain red-haired skull. "He says he wants to see you or else he'll blow up the place. I don't think he's got anything, but I figured he could at least say it to your face before I shoot him.

Matt had his hands in the air. "I _swear_; if you shoot me I really will blow this place up."

"You'll be dead," the man wielding the gun snarled.

"I'll respawn," the gamer answered without missing a beat.

"Matt, you can't fucking respawn," Mello blatantly growled, all at once acknowledging that he knew the red head. He waved a hand. "Get your gun away from him." Grudgingly, the man obeyed, stalking off because he knew that he'd no longer be needed now that his authority had been undermined.

Heaving a sigh of what seemed to be relief, Matt lowered his gloved hands to his sides and smiled faintly. "Geeze, got enough security, Mello?" he taunted the other.

"Obviously not enough," the blonde answered deftly, eyeing Matt in a wary sort of way. "Were you seriously going to blow this place up?" he questioned, knowing that it was probably within Matt's capability to. He knew enough about the technicality of anything to rig just about everything imaginable with a little research, which he was quite efficient at.

Matt smirked. "Yeah, I was." He pulled out of his pocket a small object that resembled a dismantled joystick. "Not enough to really do any damage though, just to freak people out." 

Mello arched a brow most skeptically. "Can you blow something up without 'really doing any damage'?" he questioned dryly, clearly not believing Matt in the slightest. He only received a roguish grin as his answer before Matt exhibited the audacity to plop down on the last couch cushion that was untouched by his booted feet. He found himself cursing that his legs weren't the slightest bit longer.

"C'mon, Mel'," he jived at the other. "Can't you at least pretend you're happy to see me?"

"It's two fucking thirty in the morning."

"It's two fucking thirty in the morning and I'm sitting in front of you after four years. Aren't you even a little glad to see me?" Matt questioned, throwing a line here. After the fact that they'd been friends since before puberty, he would like to think that Mello might be somewhat pleased to see that someone cared about him enough to seek him out.

"No."

Or not.

The red-head pursed his lips in a highly displeased manner, twirling the detonator in his fingers.

"Matt, if you blow this place up I will fucking kill you," Mello threatened gravely, staring the gamer down. He'd learned in Wammy's, though, that this was fruitless. Matt couldn't be deterred by glaring, much unlike anyone else Mello had ever known. Also unlike people who had shared the blonde's company in the past, Matt was the only one who really had enough nerve to go against what Mello said—it was both infuriating and impressive.

Standing up, Matt brushed off his pants (which hadn't the slightest trace of dust on them) in a very hard, frustrated sort of way before stomping out of the base. Immaturity at its best; that was what Mello had always seen Matt as. It seemed that his childish nature, at least, was one thing that hadn't changed over the years.

Anyone who thought to question a stranger's presence in the mafia quarters didn't touch him—either word had spread that he knew Mello, or he looked pretty damn pissed off. He'd just gotten to his car when a corner of the upper floor erupted into debris, dust, and a small fire. Snarling in a very spiteful manner, Matt tossed the detonator into a nearby gutter.

He'd just gotten into his car when his cell phone rang. A restricted number. He pointedly ignored it until a shot shattered the window of his back window. "Shit, shit! I'm picking up!" he yelled at no one in particular, grabbing his phone and holding it to his ear in his crouched position. "What the hell, are you trying to kill me?"

"_I did say I would if you blew this place up." _

"And you chose now to be a man of your word?"

"_Don't say I didn't warn you."_

Matt scowled, growling. "Geeze, it was only a storage room," he protested, still hunched in his car.

"_Yeah, you owe us a hell of a lot of cocaine now," _Mello answered from the other line, a snap of his chocolate bar punctuating his sentence.

"I don't owe you anything," the redhead grated as he turned the car on. He heard Mello mutter something before another bullet hit its mark again, this time the window of his back door. "Fuck! What the hell!"

"_I said anywhere but the driver's side, so be grateful."_

He sighed, pulling the key out again and sitting, in silence, in the eerily quiet car. "Okay, okay," he said finally, heaving another long exhale. "I blow your little drug closet, you shoot the hell out of my car. What do you want?" Matt demanded, although he was really in no place to make demands. Mello, after all, was the one with the gunmen. 

There was silence from the other line.

"Well?" he questioned impatiently.

Mello muttered something else, and then there was uncanny quiet from both sides. So they were alone again. _"I did…" _Mello cut himself off, chocolate grinding between his teeth as he tried to rephrase whatever it was that he was going to say to be a little more dignified. _"I didn't want you to get involved." _It seemed that he'd decided to omit whatever it was he did want. Matt was smart enough to figure it out, though.

"Ever think of coming back to get me, then, if you missed me so much?" he crooned, smirking slightly in the darkness of his vehicle. At least Mello couldn't see this—although the gamer would have to bet that the other could hear his mocking tone quite clearly.

"_Shut up, I didn't say that!" _Mello angrily snapped, digging his own grave here. _"No, asshole. I didn't." _

Matt smirked. "You're lying."

"_Shut up!"_

Matt shook his head. "It wouldn't matter anyways. I left a little while after you did." He shrugged, not sure why he was doing it. Mello couldn't see it and he didn't really have anything to be shrugging about.

"_You did _what_?" _Mello demanded, sounding particularly angry with Matt for reasons unknown.

Slightly taken aback, Matt answered, "I left." Simple as that. He didn't really get why his leaving would make Mello angry, but then again, Mello was something of an enigma. Besides, almost everything made the blonde angry.

"_Where did you go?"_

"Where did _you_ go?"

Mello was quiet for a little while. No one knew of his time after Wammy's, not a soul who wasn't there with him. Even though Matt might have been Mello's friend, he wasn't exactly willing to disclose this period of his life. It was kind of special, secret. Something that was his very own, where he was in control of his own life. He'd taken it into his own hands when he'd left Wammy's and it'd been up to him to go somewhere where he could survive. _"I found some people I knew from before the orphanage," _he answered finally, keeping his reply as vague and possible. Matt, though, didn't push, not that Mello really expected him to. He didn't care enough. Then again, Mello didn't even ask again how Matt had fared at thirteen or how he was. _"Where did you go?"_ he asked again, contradicting this detachment before he could get a handle on his words.

The gamer didn't seem to care that Mello was being particularly gracious to his well-being, however unintentional. "I hit the streets," Matt answered nonchalantly, as though he hadn't almost died more times than he could count. "And then I joined up with some hackers." His answer, though slightly more revealing than Mello's, still wasn't quite a good enough answer. Mello decided to finally adequately return the other's apathy by simply leaning back and sending the sound of snapping chocolate into the receiver.

"_Why?"_

The seventeen-year-old raised a brow. "Why did I leave? Because I… Because me and Near wanted to make sure you didn't get yourself kil—"

"Near_?" _Mello sounded like he'd just choked.

"Yeah, Near," Matt confirmed with an unseen nod. "He came and talked to me after… Well, it was rough without you," Matt quickly diverted his statement before he could get into how pathetic he was without the blonde's presence. "And I was thinking about leaving, but then he told me to, and I just… I guess I just decided it was a good idea, then." He shrugged again, sighing and slouching back against the seat, sinking down slightly towards the pedals of the car. "I mean… Man, Mello. You're all caught up in being the best and beating people and shit, proving yourself or whatever, and you don't realize what you do because you're too focused on what you're _going_ to do." Matt, for once in his life, made some sense.

Mello was silent on the other side.

Then, there was the discrete sound of movement, heard only due to the lack of other noises. Finally, he spoke again. _"So you're saying you're both wusses and you're saying that I was some big part in your stupid lives?" _

Matt shrugged, seeming completely unfazed by how Mello had belittled his pseudo confession. He was used to it. Mello belittled everything. "Yeah," he answered, sighing slightly. Even though he was used to the other's attitude, it was still somewhat discouraging to see Mello's superiority complex. He closed his eyes behind his goggles, at least grateful that his intentions weren't as easily read as they were said so he didn't have to suffer Mello's degradation all the time.

A tap came to his door. Startled, Matt snapped his eyes open and jerked his gaze to the window. Mello lowered the phone from his ear, gazing from the other side of the glass at his old friend in a completely unreadable sort of way.

"Ready to return the favor?"


	8. pistols as friends

"_You're just a pawn, a resource."_

Matt and Mello didn't see each other very often over the next few months. Mainly, Mello was crass to Matt and rude to him, hoping to keep him out of the dirty affair that was the mafia. Unfortunately, the redhead was already immersed in his own dirty affairs, so Mello's wishes weren't exactly fulfilled no matter how hard he tried. The world wasn't meant to be safe.

Mostly, they kept contact through phone and compromise. Matt had to promise not to come seek Mello's face-to-face company again (or blow anything else up), and in exchange, he was allowed to know of the other's whereabouts and doings. It was a risk that Matt was sure that the rather persnickety blonde wouldn't ordinarily take, but he supposed that it was sort of like compensation for the years past.

Sometimes, though, the pair of old friends—now hardly considered as such—got into rather heated conversations through their mobiles. It was during one of these arguments that Mello spat out what he would like to believe to be the true nature of his relationship with Matt. "I don't need you!" he shouted at the receiver, his emotions, once again, getting the better of him. Luckily, no one was there to bear witness to his undignified outrage. "I keep you because you're useful, but anyone could replace you in an instant," he hissed, his features contorted with anger, guilt, and frustration; none of which he would admit, of course, but all of which were very evident.

On the other end of the explosive statements was Matt, silent and pensive and strangely calm in the face of Mello's fire—the contrast was familiar. In fact, it was so familiar that he knew that Mello was probably throwing things in his relatively new base—and he was. "I fucking own you, I give you what you want, so you damn well should be grateful," Mello spat, chucking an ashtray across the room. Matt heard it crash against the wall from his side, flinching slightly as a memory of Mello throwing his GameBoy advance back in Wammy's came fleetingly to him.

"Mello," he tried, strangely patient, even for him. In fact, he surprised himself with how even his tone sounded. He knew that he was boiling with shame and hurt, but none of that came across. Maybe he didn't want Mello to know that he was sorry he couldn't be any more useful. "Would you just shut up and listen to me for a second?" He heard cursing and grumbling from the line, but nothing else. He deemed it safe to continue. "Look, get rid of me if you want to, but just don't get yourself killed, okay?"

Silence.

"Mello?" Matt pursed his lips into a thin line as he waited for an answer, fidgeting with his goggles. His game, muted and ignored, sat on the floor between his feet. For a moment longer, he heard nothing more but silence, but then a snap of chocolate assured him that Mello was still there, still close enough to listen. He didn't know what he wanted to say, or where he was going, but as long as he still had the other's attention, he wanted to talk. "I'll be here if you need me, but if you really don't want me around, just… just don't call anymore." He shrugged even though the blonde wasn't there to see. Mostly, it was for his own benefit. Silence still came from the other line.

Breathing a soft exhale, Matt stared down at the blinking video game on the ground. "Bye."

He waited a second longer before hanging up.

Silence.

Things change for the worse sometimes. It's called karma.

Several days later, the doorbell to Matt's shitty apartment rang, waking him from a hung-over sleep. He hadn't exactly been drinking his problems away, but he hadn't exactly been drinking for recreation either. "Ughn…" He groaned, shifting on his couch but otherwise refusing to move. Whoever it was at the door was unimportant. They could just shove off. No one important came to visit Matt.

The doorbell ringing turned into door knocking—then door banging, and then door-shaking, house-rattling door attacking. "Fine, fine!" Matt yelled, instantly regretting his loss of control when a sharp pain stabbed into his skull. Moaning curses to himself about callers coming in the dead of night, he dragged his tired body off the couch and to the door. Undoing the latch, he jerked it open, his eyes closed and his expression annoyed, uninhibited without his usual goggle shield. "What the fuck do you want?" he questioned, opening his eyes with complete and utter impatience. Of all the people or things he expected to see, he did not expect to be staring down the barrel of a .32 caliber pistol.

"Fuck you."

He had to strain to hear the softly spoken words. Really, straining was not something he wanted to do hung-over and in the face of a gun. Still, he did it, because the tone, if not the blur of what might've been blonde hair behind the pistol commanded him to.

"Fuck you, thinking you're so fucking smart and making me feel like complete shit. Fuck you for ever being my friend, fuck you for ever existing, Mail Jeevas." His name was spat like vermin's piss. The gun cocked. Matt swallowed.

"I should kill you now."

Nothing happened.

"I want to kill you so bad it hurts not to pull this trigger."

Indeed, if Matt tried hard enough, he could see that the hand holding the gun was less than steady. The trigger finger was white with strain. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead, his breath shallow in his throat and smoker's lungs; he was starting to feel light-headed.

His knees shook. He gripped the doorframe in an effort to keep standing. "Mello," he choked out finally, not meaning to sound so overwhelmed. Maybe it was Mello standing on his doorstep after a year of lax communication—maybe it was the sheer exhilaration of having a loaded gun cocked two inches away from the bridge of his nose that made him so feeble. "I'm sorry." He wasn't sure what he was apologizing for—all he knew was that he was doing it. Laying himself down in front of the other like always, always being the one to submit. He took a dragging step aside, his bare feet scraping against the carpet. The gun followed him, aimed still perfectly between his eyes. "Mello," he said again, softer, not sure what his intent was. Regardless, the gun lowered.

His blue-green eyes blinked in an attempt to focus, finally confirming that indeed, Mello was standing in front of him, however still blurry. He closed the door and hauled himself back to the couch, sitting down heavily on it to a side to allow Mello to sit if he wanted. Apparently, he didn't. The mafia leader walked around the dirty apartment, kicking aside empty cigarette boxes, game controllers, ash trays, power strips, clothes that may or may not have belonged to Matt. He was falling asleep sitting up when the butt end of a Smirnoff bottle thrust under his nose.

"Are you an idiot?"

"I'm sorry?" Matt blinked awake again, staring up at the other.

Mello shook the empty, glass bottle for effect—or maybe out of anger. The gamer couldn't really tell. "What the hell are you doing with all this shit?"

Groggily, he tried to pull an answer out of his ass that was sufficient enough to quell Mello's inexplicable temper. "I don't really know." So far, he was failing. "I don't… I just had it. Might as well drink it." Either he was always this bad a liar, or that hangover was really getting to him.

He swore he could hear the blonde's teeth grinding together. "Why? You can't hold your alcohol."

Matt scowled. "How would you know?" They'd never gone drinking together or anything, and besides, Mello wasn't one to talk, he was skinnier and shorter and altogether punier than Matt was. "Shut up, I can so anyways." This statement only earned him a rather pointed stare from the blonde who was silently, but clearly, referring to his rather inebriated state. The reprimanded one only groaned and slumped over, trying hard to ignore Mello, despite the fact that he was standing right there in the living room after almost a year of avoiding Matt like the devil's plague. Maybe that would have been more potent if Matt didn't have a bitching headache to vie for his attention.

Mello looted around the apartment some more, leaving the redhead to sulk in his own pain and pity. That didn't last for long. Matt heard the angry stomping, even on the carpeted floor, but neglected to move. He instantly wished that he had at least opened his eyes, though, when he suddenly felt a ripping pain in his temple. "Augh!" He shouted in both agony and surprise, his blue-green eyes snapping open. "Fuck! Fuck!" Clasping his hands against his head, he looked up at Mello, who still held his gun tipped back in his hand. He was staring stonily at Matt. "What the fuck? Did you just fucking pistol whip me?"

Mello looked like he could kill someone. Quite frankly, the gamer was surprised that he wasn't looking into the eye of his friend the .32 caliber again. Still stoic and silent, the blonde held up a slightly crumpled bag between his leather-gloved fingers. Fine white powder clung to the insides.

Matt shut up.

"Look… Mel'…." he tried slowly after a while, eyeing the other like a cornered animal might look at its feral predator. "I had the money, and… I… I mean, you couldn't really expect me to sit on my ass all day, waiting for your beck and call, could you?"

Mello said nothing.

"Come… come on." He was really starting to feel pretty pathetic. He wished that Mello would just go ahead and say something already, pistol whip him again or… Anything but stand there and stare at him like that in such an un-Mello way. The Mello he knew, the Mello he was used to and could predict would blow up at finding residual cocaine in his apartment. "It hurt, damn it. I…" Matt didn't want to admit how dependent he was on Mello or how it tormented him to wonder every week if Mello would be dead the next day. He wished that something would just spontaneously combust already so he could go attend to it and get out of under the blonde's decimating stare.

Finally, Mello's lips moved, but words hardly made it out. "Matt, you're such a fucking idiot." Relief swam over the gamer. He opened his mouth to say something—but before he could, the explosion occurred. Supernovas went off, combustions combusted, the world was on a catastrophic break down concentrated in his apartment. "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?" All of the sudden, Matt felt disoriented. Mello's words were still ringing in his ears, colliding with his hangover and the pain of the blow to his head with the butt of Mello's gun. "You could have overdosed!" Mello was inches away from his face. "You could have died!" Mello was grasping onto his vest. "How the hell would I have fucking known?" Mello was clutching him harder, tighter than he'd known Mello to hold anything before. His hold was both hot and cold at the same time, aggressive and impassive. Matt swallowed.

"I'm sorry," he stated for about the millionth time, it seemed to him. He tried to raise his arms to wrap around the other, but somehow, he didn't think that'd be right. He hadn't held Mello since they were very young, too young. His arms, would the notion have seemed plausible anyways, wouldn't have obeyed him. They felt like lead, dragging him down, deeper into the dingy couch. "I don't use it a lot." He was trying to assure Mello, he really was. Strangely, though, he didn't think that the other needed assuring—but he kept trying anyways. "I… It was a long time ago, too." That was a lie. As soon as he hung up on Mello, he went to sleep. And then as soon as he went to sleep, he dreamt of being so high all he could see was light. And as soon as he woke up, he snorted as much as he could without making his nose bleed and chased the coming down with alcohol.

He was a little more than stupid.

"You're so goddamned fucking idiotic," Mello said, seeming to be trapped in this one-set mentality. He was still holding onto Matt so tightly that he thought that he'd break. In fact, he could swear that he felt his bones slowly giving way. Before they could snap, though, the blonde's grip slackened and he sank down onto the battered couch next to his friend. His voice and body both seemed deflated. "Really, Matt. How the hell would I have known if you'd died?"

Groaning, the red-haired male closed his eyes again and slumped down as far as he could, half-lying on the couch, and half… something else. "You're smart," he grumbled, sighing. He couldn't help but to feel like he'd wronged Mello somehow, even if he hadn't really done anything too horrible. At least, he didn't think so. Not to Mello, anyways. After a while, he became acutely aware of faint breathing near his ear. Opening an eye, he found that Mello had slunk down to his level and was staring at the ceiling. For some reason, this made an embarrassed warmth swell inside of him, forcing him to close his eyes again and wrench his head to the side, where the other couldn't see him.

"Whatever," the blonde said, seeming to not really be paying attention to Matt in the first place. "You're probably going to die some other stupid way anyways. You'll die of lung cancer." He almost sounded like he was accusing the smoker. He probably was.

Matt snorted, rolling uncomfortably onto his side. "Yeah, or I'll get Kira'd."

"Don't be stupid. Kira doesn't know who you are," Mello snapped, wondering when exactly it was that he'd even started responding to made-up lingo like 'Kira'd'. He turned his head ever-so-slightly to regard Matt, but failed, seeing as the younger had taken the liberty of burying his nose into his shoulder. "Matt." He sounded pointed and quite annoyed.

The mop of red hair at his side made some kind of incoherent noise and wriggled. Mello grimaced. Maybe he picked a very bad day to call on Matt, but he didn't really think that he'd get much headway with the other. He wasn't even going to try. Instead, he turned over to face Matt, his hands still gripping his gun. He didn't close his eyes, he didn't speak, he didn't move. Even when he felt Matt's arms sliding around his waist, he made a blatant point of not reacting in the slightest. His adamant nature and complete and utter will not to lose face in anything thus forced him to spend the entire night with Matt contently pressed far too closely against his chest. He'd really have to get Matt for all this trouble in the morning. In the meantime, Mello just fell asleep.

* * *

**AN: **Sorry about the late update, guys. Thanks for not sending me hate mail or anything. Completely and honestly I had a friend over and I just forgot. But here you are. Hope you enjoy. 


	9. lying: more addict for drugs pt I

"_Don't leave me again."_

Morning sun filtered through the dirty blinds of Matt's apartment, shedding fragmented light on the laptops, consoles, and game controllers that littered the floor. Matt was still half-buried on the couch, alone. Mello, some time during the night—rather, early morning—had carelessly strewn a blanket over the red-head that now encompassed half his head and little more of his body. Said blonde was now sitting on something that might have once been a kitchen chair, but for the most part, lacked the kitchen. He'd explored Matt's apartment in hunt for chocolate, finding the kitchen only to be a few cupboards, a sink piled full of dishes that looked like they hadn't been touched in a few months, and a miniature refrigerator. Idly, Mello played a text-based game that he was willing to guess Matt had fashioned.

"You enter a small room; the door closes behind you…" he mumbled as he played, scrolling through the description of the upstairs area he'd locked himself in. "Do you pick the key, the life raft, or the… flame… thrower…" Pausing at the baffling choices, he immediately opted for the key—cackling, recorded laughter ripped through the apartment. Mello recognized it as Matt's coined diabolical laugh.

A voice groggily rose from the couch. "Pick the flame thrower first, break the window, stick the life raft out and slide down it…"

Mello snorted. "That's stupid, Matt."

"That's a video game."

The elder scowled, throwing the controller aside without a second look before getting up and stretching. "That's not even a video game. It's like one of those dumb adventure books." He looked over at Matt in time to see the other fighting the blanket off like it was a monster determined to lay entrapping misery upon him. He rolled his eyes and stalked around the apartment again, not looking for anything this time, nor surveying—just walking so that he'd feel like he was doing something productive.

"I liked those books," the gamer finally answered as he managed to throw the blanket to the ground. He warily eyed Mello. "You're going to give yourself an aneurism. Sit down."

"You can't give yourself an aneurism, dolt," Mello snapped back, though obliging—but only because he had something to say and he needed to say it and go before two. He barely prepared himself at all—the thought just occurred to him to finally break the news to his friend, and then he dove. "Matt, I'm going to L.A." No preparation, no sweet-talking, no circumlocution.

Matt blinked. "Great," he said, not seeming to quite capture the point of what Mello was saying.

"I want you to stay here."

Matt blinked. "…What?"

Mello kept his eyes averted, not sure exactly why he was succumbing to such a simple, evasive tactic. Neither evasive nor simple was a part of his usual being, but he supposed that this wasn't exactly usual. As much as he neglected to admit, Matt wasn't just another ordinarily disposable part of his life. At least, not in the usual way disposable meant. "I want you to stay here. Keep a look out on things." He was lying through his teeth, making up excuses. What he was really trying to say was that he was about to get involved in something far heavier than he'd been involved in before. Near had formed the SPK. It was time for Mello to stop dawdling with the mafia and actually do something with it. As for what that meant for Matt, Mello wanted him to keep out. This, of course, was nothing new.

"Bull shit," Matt snapped immediately, seeing straight through Mello's bland explanation. The blonde kept his gaze hard on the television. 'You're claustrophobic. You die of an anxiety-induced heart attack. Retry?' impassively stared at him from the screen. "You're just fucking leaving." The quick turn from the sarcastic, sleepy Matt to the pissed off and bitter Matt was striking.

Mello gritted his teeth. "I have things to do and I don't want you there."

"You can't fucking protect me forever, Mello!"

"Who the hell says I'm trying to protect you?"

"Oh, so I guess you just hated me so much that you left me at Wammy's, you evaded me for three years, you didn't let me near you after that, and now you came to my door with a fucking pistol in my face just to tell me that you're going to fucking L.A. without me," Matt spat. His pale skin was flushed with aggravation. "Really fucking insensitive, Mello."

The elder instantly quieted, this lack of aggression something that was uncanny in him. However, just as unexpected were Matt's rather quick turn and his complete and utter out-of-character irritation. Usually, Matt never got angry with Mello, not even… Mello couldn't remember the last time that the other had gotten angry with him. He pursed his lips into a thin line, forcing his voice to be level. "Matt, be reasonable," he stated so finely that he felt for the first time that he what he was saying was something close to a matter of fucking life or death.

Openly, Matt snorted. Ridiculing Mello wasn't something that he did too often either. "Reasonable?" he repeated, his sardonic nature completely naked and strewn in front of Mello. No censorship here. "Who the fuck are you to tell me to be _reasonable_, Mister Run-Away-From-Wammy's-And-Join-The-Mafia?" Matt was a little beyond pissed at this point. "_Reasonable_ is a fucking joke to you! Everything is such a big fucking deal that _reasonable_ to you doesn't even _exist!_"

"Matt, would you shut up!" Mello snapped, his teeth grinding in irritation. Mostly, this was because half of what Matt was saying was completely and utterly true and Mello couldn't deny it unless he took one hell of a stretch with honesty.

By this time, the redhead was inches away from the television, staring at the word 'retry' like it really meant something to him. He was silent. Mello, slightly bothered by Matt's pendulum of mood and level, remained quiet as well. The tension still reigned high.

"Don't leave me again."

Admittedly, the mafia leader was just _slightly_ taken back. Slightly. "I have to." He only answered after a long while. He hadn't been able to think of anything to say but that bland statement.

He had to leave.

Simple.

Didn't Matt understand that the world was bigger than friendships and old connections and messing around with the mafia? Didn't he understand that Kira was out there, killing people, being number one on the world's most feared and most worshipped? Mello couldn't stand just sitting around and doing nothing. He wasn't like Matt.

"Mello, please."

There was something about Matt's voice that Mello didn't like. He sounded too hollow, too uncaring. Too apathetic—something about Matt, in that moment, struck recognition in Mello that hit him too close to his own perception of himself to be comfortable. He didn't want his friend to be there; his obsession was unhealthy. He knew that. He wasn't stupid, he wasn't blind. He knew that his superiority complex and his desire to be the victor in every sector of life was something that would eventually doom him. A drug. An addiction. Matt was already being a fucked up idiot with the whole cocaine thing, he didn't need another addiction to add to it. "You've got to let me go."

For once, words utterly failed Matt.

For once, Mello's egoism completely hit the mark.

* * *

**AN:** Sorry for the short chapter this week, guys. I was going to make it longer but it would have been a little too awkward for my tastes. Early because I'm going to NYC in a couple of hours and I won't be here to update tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed the chapter, short as it was. Thanks for all the support, by the way. I probably wouldn't keep updating if it weren't for that. Hah. Check back next Saturday. (: 


	10. following the Rose Line

_Come find me._

Matt and Mello went about an entire year without speaking. At all. No communication whatsoever—they kept track of each other ambiguously, each not knowing how exactly updated the other was, but both trusting their wits about them to keep accurate. This was essential. There was simplicity in contacting one another to make sure, but neither of them really wanted to do that. They'd fallen out and fallen in too many times already, too much like a high school couple; contacting each other after so long would be like forfeiting their manhood.

There was no question as to what Mello had been doing; hanging around with the mafia with a hard-set goal to defeat a mass murderer could only mean so many things. His power had escalated to rival the SPK, every drop of energy in his body directed towards beating Near. As always. Something in his gut told him, though, that Near was winning out on him. It didn't seem to matter that he had possession of the Death Note; nothing seemed to matter. He was two moves away from the king, and yet, his goal seemed so out of reach. So much like someone, some higher power was going to knock this opportunity right out of his hands.

_Ring._

_Ring._

Mello impatiently pursed his lips and snapped off another piece of chocolate.

_Beep._ _"You've reached Matt's cell. Either I'm not here, or I saw your number and threw my phone. Leave a message."_

Growling at the less-than-inviting voicemail recording, Mello opted to not leave a message at all, instead snapping the phone shut and tossing it aside.

"Boss," someone said from the opposite end of the room. "Why don't you just have someone else do it? We know plenty of people who'll set up explosives for us. Just have—"

"No," Mello interrupted, punctuating his defiance with an adamant snap of his candy bar. The entire room sat in silence, the still air stirred only by the sounds of the whirring technology that kept them so adequately prepared. Finally, unexpectedly, the stale sounds shattered. Mello picked up the ringing phone.

"_Mello."_

"Idiot, what if it wasn't me?" the blonde snapped, but at least inwardly glad that Matt had enough sense to realize.

"_It had to've been. You're the only one who's got this number."_

Recalling the other's voicemail, Mello found himself vaguely annoyed and slightly offended. He said nothing because he knew very well that it would most likely please Matt. A lot. "How close are you?"

"_Close."_

"Where are you?"

"_Santa Monica. I can get to where you are in probably twenty minutes."_ Matt had always been adept at seeing what Mello really wanted when he was beating around the bush. Supposedly, that was what friends did the best.

--

Matt actually got to 'where Mello was' in an hour an a half, closer to two hours. It took him about that long to gather everything that Mello wanted him to get and secure a means to pay for it all without suspicion. Of course, in a business as shady as Mello had suddenly involved him in, everyone suspected everything.

Pipes, wires, tubing, capsules, tablets, powder, chemicals. Bomb supplies.

"You want to do what?" Matt questioned hollowly when Mello told him what he wanted. The gamer kept his eyes averted. It hadn't been so long, it suddenly seemed, that he'd last seen Mello in his apartment, telling him how he had to let go. How he had to forget about Mello and the danger his name entailed and how he had to stop being so damn attached. And yet, there he was in Los Angeles because Mello knew he couldn't keep to that.

"Just do it, Matt." Mello's answer sounded slightly exasperated at the very least. He knew from their first meeting since Wammy's that the other was adept at creating and rigging explosives, and especially at containing them to a certain area.

"As a 'safety measure'?" he pushed incredulously, even though the gang members nearest them were throwing each other wary looks. Apparently, no one seemed to second-guess Mello even now. Matt had always been an exception for one reason or another. "You don't use explosives as a 'safety measure', Mello."

"You do if you've got the notebook, okay?" Mello shot back. "You don't get it, Matt. If everything's a fucking game, letting anyone else get the notebook is losing. I'd rather blow it up than let Near or someone have it."

"But first, you'd rather keep it."

"No shit."

"Which means you'd use this as a last resort."

"Exactly."

"Which means you won't have abandoned the notebook."

"What, you think I'm just going to give up and destroy it?"

"… Mello, you're shitting me. Really. You've got to be shitting me." Matt seemed to be otherwise at a loss of words. "You can't be serious."

Growling, Mello tossed the notebook aside, scattering cigarettes and a half-filled glass of whiskey in the process. "Do you think I'd call you after all this time to fuck around? I told you to do it, so do it!"

There was a long pause. And then silence.

Just silence.

Always, Matt had been completely and faithfully obedient.

Some things never changed.

_Restless nights are the cousins to insomnia._

Matt was uneasy. Matt was very uneasy. He felt like he'd just swallowed every single bomb he made for Mello and was waiting for them to go off one by one and kill him slowly. He felt sick and queasy. If he'd eaten anything earlier in the day, it probably would have been in vain. True, in an attempt to assuage his reluctance, he'd insisted on surveillance so he could be immediately called for aid if something went… wrong, but Mello had refused. And true, they had devised a way for Mello to stay safe, but Mello was reckless. He always had been. He always would be.

As a kid, Matt chewed his nails down to little more than bleeding half-moons when Mello had bad nights and crashed in his room, only to disappear halfway through. Tonight, Matt chewed his nails, smoked more cigarettes than he had brain cells and tried his damndest to stay away from the heroin.

Moonlight spilled over the bed in broken squares, clinging to the sheets and his legs like panes of old promises. The room wasn't cold, but wherever his body wasn't covered his bare skin was littered with goose bumps that made him roll uncomfortably on his mattress. Something was going to happen. He just knew it. Something bad, something really, really bad. He felt the way he did that night before they'd received the news of L's death. He felt clammy and chilled from the very core of his ribcage, so cold that no amount of smooth smoke could ease the ice water from his lungs.

So Matt bit down his nails until he tasted blood, and then he kept on going.

Days slipped by. Weeks passed. October came and went without consequence.

And then it was November 10th.

Matt wasn't exactly an insomniac. He was close, though, in the family. Something more of a brother or a cousin twice removed. Whatever he was, the night of November 10th—rather, the very early morning of November 11th, his close insomnia found him very awake. Maybe it was the water in his lungs again that no amount of silky cigarette smoke could seem to evaporate. Maybe it was the unease that had settled in a constant course through his veins, like mercury in stream water. It shouldn't have been there and it didn't do any immediate damage, it just slowly withered everything away.

It was nearing two in the morning. Matt debated going to sleep, but he knew that no matter how much he thought about it and how much he tried, he'd never succumb to bliss tonight. Besides that, he had a small candle lit in the center of the room with a wide, silver spoon resting beside it that indicated that his efforts couldn't be met if the smoking foil in his hands didn't.

In spite of the heat in the room that bade him wander around only in a pair of jeans, he was still uneasily cold. Something in the back of his head kept telling him to open his eyes whenever he let his eyelids drop. Something in his fingertips shocked him every time he tried to get comfortable. And then, something jarred him so badly that he jumped when it went off: his phone.

Scrambling frantically for it, Matt realized that he'd accidentally buried it somewhere beneath his video games, notes, computers and naked pillows. He finally managed to procure it from the monstrous depths of his coding papers. Cold dread flooded his system; he still tried to demonstrate some feigned ease. "What's up?"

There was a momentary pause on the other line, then a strained voice._ "Everyone's dead."_

Matt stiffened. "What do you mean?" The word 'dead' had heavy connotations; even though he didn't know anyone except the person on the other line whom he'd care about if they were dead, he still felt uncannily perturbed. Opiates were his counter-method for exactly this. Unfortunately, he felt utterly failed by them at the time. His heart was racing in his chest in a manner that no amount of chasing could soothe.

"_Kira got us. That son of a bitch shinigami… Fucking deputy director, they're all… fuck, fuck them. Fuck everyone. Fuck Snydar. Fuck Jose." _The voice trailed off.

If Mello was talking about fucking everyone on the face of the planet and death gods, Matt had to say that he had ample reason now to be worried. All his paranoia did him no good at all; he felt bile rising in his throat and the uncontrollable urge to smoke a cigarette and bite his nails. Swallowing, he chewed at his fingertips as he listened to Mello mumble. Finally, he got the nerve back to say something that wouldn't come out as nonsense. "Mello, what's going on? Where are you?"

Laughter. _"I blew everything up, Matt… You're a fucking genius, I fucking blew everything up. It's all fucking gone." _

The ice water in his lungs turned immediately to ignited fire as his very nightmares and haunting day dreams were confirmed. "Mello, where are you?" he repeated, still trying to sound calm, but his entire body was rebelling against him. The bombs he'd swallowed were slowly going off. One by one.

"_Headquarters."_

"Don't tell me…"

"_I did."_

Fall air mingling into winter chill hit Matt in the face as he suddenly found himself outside. He didn't know how he'd flown through the halls and down the stairs so quickly, or how he even remembered his keys, but there he was, climbing into his car. It was amazing that he could even get his fucked up body to move as fast as it did, but he did. "Mello, keep talking. Hang on, okay? You got out, right? It's not bad, is it?" He barely waited for an answer. They were both talking over each other, except maybe Mello was just talking.

"_I… I don't know, Matt. I really don't fuckin' know. It hurts." _Matt could barely conceive how weak Mello sounded on the other line. They'd known each other since he was fucking eight years old, and never had he ever heard Mello sound so completely and utterly helpless. There was no anger, no frustration; just pure vulnerability. _"…I… remember… Matt, when I left… It hurt like this. Hurt so fuckin' bad… L gone, being a kid gone… you gone…" _

Matt wanted to argue that Mello could have taken him. He could have taken him. He didn't say a word.

"_My mom… Mother… she had friends. She didn't want me because… I… I don't know Matt. Her friends liked me." _

Matt could barely understand what Mello was saying. Not over the roar of the engine, not over the sound of his tires on the deserted road. Not over his beating heart flooding his ears with white noise.

"_They helped me. They…"_ Laughter. _"No, no… Matt, they really fucked me over. I'm telling you. Really, they just… oh man… Man, I should be castrated for all the shit they did to me."_ Through Mello's mumbling, Matt could distinctly hear the word 'shit' spat the way his name was months ago. Like vermin's piss.

Los Angeles.

Luckily, Matt had enough sense to move when he knew that Mello was in far more danger than he could risk being twenty minutes away for.

Los Angeles.

945 Clydown Avenue.

Los Angeles.

Matt didn't even turn off the car when he pulled up past the chain link fence. Mello was still talking.

"_And Matt… I was scared, Matt… I knew I had to make it… But God… only if God was on my side." _

He didn't even know what Mello was talking about anymore, but to hear his old fearless friend say that he was scared… Matt chewed at his fingernails as he pushed past the rubble of what might have been a regal house some many years ago. He could hear sirens in the distance. No time. No time.

"Where are you?"

"_I don't know. Outside?"_

Well, seeing as there was no such thing as 'inside' anymore, Matt would have to say that 'outside' was common sense. The thing was, though, he wasn't sure if Mello could actually tell the difference between walls and open air.

"Okay, just… just hang on, Mello. I'm gonna find you." To his utter amazement, Matt sounded a lot more cool-headed than he felt. He could feel his heart thundering in his chest, blood surging through his veins. The heroin took a back seat to this adrenaline. His drug of choice never was the opiate, never was the cocaine. It only just occurred to him that he was just wearing a pair of jeans and looked like he just had sex, considering that he'd bolted from his bed to the car. The chill didn't get to him. It never was the drugs.

Matt started from the back. The room that they had specified Mello be in, should he have to be there at all, would have collapsed on the west side of the building. Lodging his phone between his shoulder and his ear in a painful jam, he started to dig. His raw fingertips burned.

You should have protected him.

Matt threw a slab of concrete aside.

You should have known.

"Mello, where the fuck are you?"

You should have said no.

"_I don't know, it's… there's a little bit of light."_

You should have been there.

Buried. Mello was fucking buried.

You should have been a better friend.

A hand.

Breathing hard, Matt grabbed that hand, finally feeling icy coldness penetrating his skin and digging into his body. "Mello," he said. "Mello, holy fucking shit, Mello, damn it—Mello—"

A muffled voice.

Matt threw his phone aside, cursing as he, with one hand, pushed away iron rails, broken screens and wires. The sirens were wailing closer.

The white noise that previously pounded on his eardrums was now spreading through his body like wild fire in dry air. The flames were cold instead of hot, turning his limbs to ice as it went. Frigid, frigid, numbing ice. "Hang on, Mello," he muttered, whispered under his breath as he blindly, unfeelingly searched for the rest of his friend's body. His fingers clutched tight to the white hand he held.

Blonde hair.

Black leather.

Burnt skin.

The putrid smell of smoldered flesh and the taste of copper and ash in the air hit Matt like a punch directly in his face. All at once the numbness went away, leaving him feeling expired and ill. He felt like he'd just been mercilessly thrown into a blender, whipped around, and spat out north of the Artic Circle. Disoriented, dizzy, cold.

He balked at the sight of Mello's torn and tattered body, his skin completely burnt away in places, his muscles barely clinging to bone. Blood. Gingerly, Matt dragged the former mafia boss out of the wreckage; former, because everyone else had to have been a fucking demon if they survived. Matt had always known that Mello had to be the Devil's incarnate.

The whine of sirens drew even closer. "We have to get out of here," the redhead stated to no one in particular. He didn't think that Mello could hear him anymore—all he was doing was mumbling incoherently. Saying something about whores and crack.

The ticking of the countdown clock was providing a monotonous chorus in the back of his head, but he couldn't help but to take his time. He accounted it to having to be careful with Mello's battered body, but he knew it was just the ache of holding the barely living, breathing skeleton in his hands. It was uncanny to see hot-shot Mello suddenly so broken and… helpless. It was enthralling in a way that made him feel sick.

Carrying the other back to the car was an easy feat to achieve, even if he did have to quicken his step to hopefully avoid getting cornered by the police. Somehow maneuvering Mello's body in his arms, he managed to get the other into the back seat of his car before clambering into the front.

All right.

What did he do now?

* * *

**AN:** oman guys you don't know how close i came to forgetting to upload this. xD There may or may not be an update next week, I'm sorry! we'll have to see how my schedule pans out. hopefully this semi-long chapter will placate you in the event that i don't update next saturday. hope you enjoyed it. keep reviewing please. 8D It makes me feel like I'm doing something right. 


	11. hint: more addict for drugs pt II

Step number one: don't panic.

"No—no, Matt—don't, stop it! God fucking stop it!"

"Mello, calm the fuck down," the gamer demanded as he attempted to divest Mello of his leather shirt. It was hard—bits of it were adhered to his skin. The blonde thrashed against him, surprising Matt with the energy and aggression that still clung in shreds to his body.

He was sure that they were going to wake up neighbors. "Fuck! Fuck that hurts! Fucking Matt, I will kill you!" Mello was screaming, howling, biting, scratching, kicking, punching—anything to get away. With his beaten body, though, he failed miserably and Matt managed to wrestle his friend into the bathroom.

Admittedly, when you were young, horny, and male, you had a lot of weird dreams. Matt, though, hadn't ever fathomed that the time he'd see Mello stark naked would be bleeding, battered, and in the bathtub of his shitty L.A. apartment. By the time that Mello ceased to thrash against his hands, half of the red-tinted bath water had spilled onto the floor and the front of Matt's shirt was entirely soaked. The blonde was unintelligibly whining as Matt, quite precariously, washed the grit and cinders from his fresh wounds.

"Matt, that hurts."

"I know," he answered as he used a wash cloth to dab at the soft, destroyed features of Mello's face. Half of it was gone, the rest still intact. It was sort of strange to see, but all at once completely… nice. It made Matt feel horrible, but it was almost nice to see Mello broken down like this.

"That… Matt, it hurts."

"I know, Mello." Since he was eight years old, eight _fucking_ years old, he'd followed Mello around like a sick, starved dog. Mello might've offered him a hand every now and again, but more often than not, he was more likely to get the door shut in his face.

"I don't want it to."

"'Course not." For once, Mello needed him instead of the other way around.

"Make it stop."

"I can't."

For once.

"You good for nothing bastard!"

Suddenly, Mello was at it again. Clawing, cursing, kicking, screaming and yowling and hollering and damning Matt. His body was as hot as his temper, hotter than his words; Matt just put up with it. Mello was far past saving tonight. It wasn't until later, what seemed like hours later but couldn't have been, that Matt realized that the bathwater clinging to the pale skin of Mello's face were tears.

--

Matt was seated at the side of his bed, on the floor. The handles of the bedside table dug into his spine as he sat with his forehead on his knees, clutching the booted soles of his heels with one hand, clenching his phone tightly against his ear with the other. There was silence in the apartment that seemed to pry into his bones. Mello was on the bed in no good condition, but alive. He was still alive.

"_Matt?_"

"Yeah…"

"_It wasn't your fault."_

Near was on the other line. Matt hadn't talked to Near in years. Despite all the mental turmoil that Mello had mercilessly slung him through, Matt had never found the need to call Near. Maybe it was because he knew that his dearest friend despised the younger male with every vein in his body and every vessel in his heart, but… Now was the time if ever to call. Near at least understood people.

"I don't know what to fucking do." Matt sounded hollow. Not only in his voice, but in his entire being. He sounded devoid of everything, like saving Mello had been the last thing he could do right. He inhaled deeply, held the breath, and let it out. Even without a cigarette, the pattern had become habit. Inhale, hold, and breathe out.

"I really don't. He's… Goddamnit, Near, if you could see him you'd get it. He's… God damn it. _Damn it_!"

"_We knew Mello was reckless."_

"But that's why I was supposed to—"

"_He's alive, isn't he?"_

"Yeah, but—"

"_Then don't worry about it._"

Silence followed. Matt turned his head up to rest his chin on his knees instead, his goggle-covered eyes barely seeing over the edge of the bed. Mello's sleeping form was mere inches away from him, softly breathing. So he was alive. Theoretically, that was all Matt should have cared about. But he knew that this made Mello vulnerable, and while Matt knew he could protect him… that was exactly the point. Mello shouldn't need protection. But he did.

He was weak, inferior, and it was Matt's fault.

Everything Mello did was to keep him top-notch, the best. Keep him tough and invincible—and in a single stroke, Matt had destroyed all that. Mello would never forgive him.

"_You can't make everything better."_

"Well sometimes I feel like I can. Or at least I should."

"_But you can't._"

"Not on my own."

"_I know you're u—"_

"I know you know I'm using," the redhead snapped back to the phone, too suddenly reminded of the lack of the high. He was one of the few people who actually liked the contrast of cocaine and heroin, the rush and the calm. Now, though, he felt like it was all whirled around at once, but the worst thing was that it wasn't the drugs. It wasn't ever the drugs. "I'm… gonna take a shower. Talk to you later, Near."

"_Matt."_

"I'm not stupid." With that, he hung up.

For the longest time, Matt just sat there with his forehead on his knees, still dressed in a damp shirt from his epic battle with Mello in the bathroom. Standing, he flicked his blue-green eyes over to the bed to survey the blonde laying there against his stripped pillows and half-dressed mattress. "God damn," he muttered, sitting on the edge of the bed with such care it seemed as though he thought he oughtn't to be there. "God damn…"

Through his shirt, Matt could still feel the distinct cling of bloodstains on his chest.

Step two: no one is allowed to die.

It felt completely bizarre to be cooking in a kitchen that actually consisted of a stove again. Matt was far too used to ordering take out or eating cereal for dinner rather than cooking. Unfortunately, the nasty burn along the side of Mello's face had rendered him much unable to talk, chew, yell, curse, whine, gripe, or do anything else involving his jaw without eliciting searing pain from his injury. The inability to chew bit required Matt to go out and buy some canned soup, a pot, a wooden spoon and a single porcelain bowl. In addition to that, it also required about five to ten minutes in front of the stove feeling like he ought to be wearing a floral apron. Fortunately, he didn't possess such a thing or the desire to purchase one.

Nudging the door open to the single bedroom of the small apartment, Matt poked his head in to see if Mello was even awake. He was, even though he shut his eyes the instant the door creaked open. "Oh come on, Mel'," Matt teased as he let himself in. "You can't pull that on me. I was the master at that when we were kids, remember?" He set a bowl of minestrone soup down onto the bedside table. Sort of surprisingly, it looked relatively appetizing.

"Mello, you gotta eat," Matt pointed out rather dryly. His friend did nothing except to stare out the window panes at the moon lighting the night sky a dull navy blue. Pursing his lips into a slightly frazzled sort of thin line, Matt decided then to sift Mello's blonde hair away from his face, where a couple of gauze pads lay taped side by side to minimize the damage to his burnt skin. Likewise dressed in various bandages and pads was his entire left side; Matt hadn't done such a shabby job, if he did say so himself.

"At least talk to me," he tried, his jovial disposition faltering slightly. Of all the things to wish for in the world, he honestly wished that Mello wouldn't do this kind of thing. That he wouldn't have this kind of attitude. But hey, you couldn't have everything when you had nothing.

Sighing, Matt took a seat on the edge of the bed, precariously balancing the bowl of soup on one knee. Absently, he stirred at it with the plastic spoon that he'd taken from the arsenal that accompanied the cooking supplies. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" he ventured, swallowing his words after that. He prodded at a potato in the soup as he attempted to round up his thoughts and speak all at once. "I should have done better. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you got blown up, you know? And I'm sorry you lost the notebook and I'm sorry everyone died." The apologies slipped off his tongue faster than he could control them, faster than he could think of them, even. The cascade of words that followed fell in much the same fashion, in a way that he couldn't touch them. "I'm sorry I'm sort of friends with Near and I'm sorry I fuck around and I'm sorry I snort coke and do heroin, I'm sorry I can't cook and that I play too many video games and th—"

"Matt, would you shut the _fuck_ up?"

Matt shut up.

Mello was sitting up now, his bare skin bathed in the moonlight in such a way that he looked somewhat effeminate. This, though, Matt would never admit aloud. The blonde beside him in the bed stared at him in a skeptical fashion before shaking his head. "Give me the soup," he ordered finally after a while of silence. Bemused, Matt surrendered the warm bowl in his hands along with the spoon. He didn't bother to warn Mello of the temperature, he was sure that it was cooled enough after the other's stubbornness and his own outburst.

Matt watched as Mello ate with his lips so close to the bowl that they brushed against the rim every now and again between spoonfuls; he could tell that his friend was attempting to eat slowly, but he failed due to the mere fact that he was completely ravenous. Grimacing, he grabbed a stray rubber band off the night stand and a handful of Mello's hair, sloppily tying it back at the base of his hairline.

"I'm not a fucking girl, Matt," Mello growled from over top of the bowl. He didn't look quite as menacing as he could have.

"I know. But it was falling in the soup and it was gross."

"Oh, so you're sanitary now?"

"Shut up." Matt stared down hard at the ground, but by no means because he was ashamed of being sanitary. A glance around his room and his meager, rented apartment refuted that anyways. The gamer hadn't changed in his messy habits since Wammy's; if anything, he'd gotten messier.

"By the way, you can cook."

"It's canned."

"I take that back."

Smiling in a bemused sort of fashion, Matt leaned back and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He had it perched between his lips and was hunting for a lighter when a bandaged hand unceremoniously yanked it from his mouth.

"Don't you fucking dare."

Matt made a face, but otherwise complied. Leaning back, he grumbled something that sounded like a very disgruntled 'it's my room' before consenting to let Mello go on eating his soup in smoke-free peace. They sat like that for a while, Mello devouring his soup at a pace that was nearly alarming and Matt begrudgingly staring at the ceiling, looking quite pointed in his boredom.

"What are you so sorry for?"

The red-headed gamer looked over at his friend, appearing to be vaguely surprised at the sudden question. "'Scuse me, but are you deaf? Did you not just hear—"

Mello waved his words away, cutting him off mid-sentence. "No, I mean _why_."

The incredulous expression ebbed off of Matt's face. "Because…" he began, stalling more than anything. He didn't really know why he was sorry. Most of that shit he apologized for wasn't really his fault. Maybe Mello's getting blown up, but really, he'd made that decision on his own. But Matt could have done better. He shrugged. "I don't know. I wasn't good enough." He said this offhandedly as though it didn't matter in the slightest to him, but the vaguely distracted expression on his face said otherwise. He could really go for a smoke right about then.

Silence again. Then, "You're friends with Near?"

Matt groaned. He wished that he had better control of his tongue, but that had never been one of his strong points. "Sort of," he reiterated, stressing the fact that he was only _sort of_ friends with Near. "I mean, we don't really keep in contact or anything, but the offer's there. And he knows that—well. You know." Matt stared at a spot on the carpet between his feet. He almost wanted to say that it was kind of nice, being sort of friends with Near, but he refrained. That at least he knew would make all Hell break loose in his apartment. Quite frankly, he didn't think that was conducive to a healthy recovery for Mello.

Looking over to his friend now, Matt said, "I think it's time for you to take some medicine."

"I don't need it."

"Mello, you've got a fever of 104˚," the redhead pointed out blatantly. "Just take some Tylenol."

Mello seemed to consider his options as well as his temperature for a moment before resigning. "Fine," he assented most grudgingly. Matt wasn't sure if it was all really all over just taking medicine, or if Mello was still bitter over the Near thing.

"Hey," Matt began, cracking something of a misplaced grin. "Be glad I didn't sleep with him."

"Oh just get out," Mello growled, using his good arm to throw a pillow at Matt as he skittishly retreated from the room. Times like these were times when Matt wondered how they could still make jokes.

* * *

**AN:** Have fun with a skipped update? I hope you did because my update pace is a lot faster than my writing pace so we're going to run out of chapters soon, especially considering how much school work and drama stuff I have to do. Speaking of, that's why this is late. i was gone all day saturday to district competition (actually i haven't gone to sleep yet) so this is now being uploaded at 3:19 AM on Sunday. ;D Anyway. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. 


	12. the bitter taste of Truth

_If life isn't never-ending, I don't know what is_.

"I need to call Hal."

"Uh huh."

"Hal Lidner."

"Uh huh."

"She works with Near."

"Uh huh."

"Are you even listening?"

"Uh hu—_ow! Fuck!_" Crouching as though he thought he would need to dodge another blow, Matt held a hand over the back of his head where one of his game controllers had hit him in the skull after Mello had launched it at him. "What the hell?"

"She works withNear, Matt. _Near._ Do you really expect me to get that close to him for a damn picture? You need to get it."

Matt screwed up his expression into a contorted mask of feigned disgust and disapproval. "Oh come on. I'm busy being an ace in the hole; I can't go skipping around to get your picture."

Mello fiercely gestured with a violent hand towards the television where a screen boasting a frozen Mario Kart game resided. "More like you're busy playing video games," he retorted, taking and angry bite out of his chocolate bar.

"Oh pish posh—"

" 'Pish posh'? What are you, gay?"

"Possibly," Matt answered breezily, ushering Mello to a beaten couch. "I know and you know that you're not feverish and delusional anymore, but you're still healing. Do you _want_ to be 2Face?"

"What?"

"The girl from the Remnants. K.A. Applegate? The '90s? She was named after the comic book character? Oh, come on."

Matt received at stare that made him want to go crawl in a hole and sex a few nerdy girls, but he refrained from saying anything about that and simply shook his head, sitting down on the other end of the couch and resuming his game of Mario Kart. "You really need to get out more, Mello."

"I don't think 'that girl from _Remnants_' has anything to do with my lack of social excursions."

Matt snorted. "But you talking like that does."

Further ignoring his friend and his helpful advice, Mello stood up again and started exploring the apartment as he had done nearly a year ago. Despite Matt's having changed locations numerous times, he still appeared to live in the same relative way. It seemed to Mello as though all Matt ever called his own was his technology. That, and his drug habit.

A bag of coke and two grams of heroin dropped into Matt's lap from the heavens. He looked up. The heaven was Mello's hand. "Can I help you?" he questioned, nearly sighing as he said the words. He wasn't really in the mood to deal with Mello and the whole… _thing._ It wasn't exactly a part of himself that he was very proud of, nor was it exactly something he liked to indulge in. Frankly, he'd been trying to stay away from it for the duration of Mello's visit, but he found that generally, it was hard. Mello's fits and his temperament weren't exactly conducive to giving up drugs that he was physically dependent on.

"You haven't gone cold turkey."

"I know."

"You want to."

Matt considered Mello's non-question for a moment before answering. "Yeah."

"Why don't you?"

"I… really don't know. I guess I can't. I've got to take care of you. I can't be throwing up and shit and take care of you at the same time," Matt answered honestly. He couldn't. He would have to say he thought something like that would be common sense.

"I'm fine now," Mello stated bluntly, although really, Matt wouldn't classify the other in the 'healthy' category.

Matt shrugged and turned back to his Mario Kart game. He was in last place and on his first of many never-to-be-finished laps, having neglected to pause the game when his stash came falling from the sky. He turned the console off and tossed the bags over by his cigarette ash tray, getting up and moving to the couch.

"I want you to quit." Mello strolled almost leisurely over to intercept the other. "I can't have you on drugs and working with me." They were mere inches away now. "I don't give a damn about what the hell you want to put into your body, but you're not going to be relying on fucking artificial feelings and working with me."

"Do I have to give up the cigarettes too?"

Mello stared. Matt stared back. Evidently, he wasn't kidding. To be completely frank, Mello thought that this happened to be one of the stupidest questions Matt had ever asked, and he'd asked a lot of questions in his lifetime. "No," he responded shortly, his eyes following Matt as the redhead stepped around him and sat on the couch, casually reclining there before he pulled his knees up to his chest and adjusted his goggles.

"Matt?"

"Yeah."

"Why'd you do it?"

Matt didn't look up.

"I mean, why'd you start?"

Matt still didn't look up. Instead, he stared down at the cushion between his toes and slid his fingers around the heel of his boot. "I needed something."

It had nothing to do with his dad. Nothing to do with his mom. Nothing at all to do with his past, but more so his present. "You weren't around and I needed something." The cigarettes already had a purpose. The coke kept him feeling alive, kept him feeling the way he felt when he and Mello embarked on a new, stupid adventure. It gave him the edge that Mello had, the dangerous edge that Mello tried so hard to protect him from. And the heroin, the heroin brought it all down again when he couldn't handle it anymore. It was like being in a fucking self-instituted hospital. Get him up in the morning, sedate him in the evening, rinse and repeat.

Silence.

Mello sat down on the arm of the couch, looking up at the ceiling in the same hard way that Matt was staring down. "You're stupid," he said finally in the flattest tone he could muster.

"I know."

"You're really, really stupid."

"I know."

Silence.

"In Wammy's," Matt started, "after you left, it was chocolate." He snorted. "I hate chocolate." He closed his eyes. "I hate the taste of cigarette smoke." He pressed his forehead against his knees. "I hate the burn of snorting coke." His fingers curled around the heels of his boots until his knuckles were skeleton joints. "I hate the empty worthlessness of being a junkie. It's like… If you can lay there for hours and not care about anything, what the hell are you living for?"

"That's what it's like?" It wasn't really a question. Not really.

He nodded about as best as he could with his head bowed the way it was. "Just about. You can lay in your own sick and you wouldn't care. Lay out in the middle of the street and you wouldn't care. At least, not until you come down again."

"And the coke?"

"You're invincible. You're... eight years old and playing fuckin' pretend in some secret nook in Wammy's again. Nothing ever is going to get you."

"And the cigarettes?"

"Nothing." Matt scoffed. "Nothing. Just the same old stupid dream."

Mello slid down to the end of the couch, a lone beaten cushion separating himself and Matt. "I don't get you," he eventually said after moments of laptops whirring dominated the air around them.

"You either." Matt spoke to his stomach, refusing to look over at Mello. He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. "You either."

* * *

**AN**. Kind of short, but i don't feel too bad about it because the next one is reallllly freaking long. it's also the only other pre-written chapter so prepare for a serious slow-down in my writing. I'll try to update at least bi-weekly but i can't make any promises. Thanks for hanging in there with me, guys. I really appreciate all the reviews and favorites and stuff. 


	13. saying sickness

_Hold your breath and count to ten; fall apart and start again._

"Matt."

Deep and shallow breaths seemed to shake the otherwise quiet apartment. Matt had, inevitably, not gone to get the picture for Mello on the account that he did need to first get off the drugs before he could do any real work and indeed, Mello did need him to be a sort of ace in the hole. The second part was easy. The first part, not so much.

"Matt."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck… fuck… f-… fuck…"

Matt threw his sheets off the bed and onto the floor, from where Mello retrieved them and haphazardly tossed them to the foot of the mattress. He didn't do anything other that watch Matt roll over on the bed. He couldn't do anything else. Drug use in the mafia hadn't been uncommon; never, though, had Mello sat through withdrawal with anyone, much less someone he actually gave a damn about.

"Give me the Serepax."

Mello didn't take orders. He especially didn't take orders from Matt. Under the circumstances, he would attribute Matt's bad mood to the whole 'not having done anything in thirty-seven hours'. Still, this didn't change the fact: "There isn't any more."

"The money's by the coffee table."

"I'm not going to get you any."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because. You're never going to get off if you're going to substitute shit for it."

"At least give me a cigarette."

"No."

"_Fuck you._"

Matt, however, didn't protest. Mello's logic, after all, was right. It was a pity then that logic didn't play much of a role in detoxing. Exhaling harshly through his teeth, Matt rolled over again and curled up on his side, his red hair clumping in a tousled mess over his uncovered eyes. Mello threw the sheets back over him and immediately, the addict clutched for an edge and drew them tightly down around his body. "Fuck, fuck… just fuck."

Pursing his lips together in a thin line, Mello stood up, deliberately averting his eyes from his friend lying in fetal position on the bed. "You need to eat."

"I can't."

"You have to."

"I'll throw it back up."

"Just eat something."

"I can't."

Mello couldn't decide whether to be frustrated or something close to sympathetic. It was like dealing with a very ill child who thought that they didn't need the medication. It seemed, unfortunately, that all Matt wanted was the medication. Slowly, Mello sat back down, this time closer to Matt.

"How…" He trailed off. Mello didn't have much experience in the caring department.

"How do I feel? How do I _look_?"

Matt was covered in cold sweat, dark circles under his eyes from not being able to sleep, pale from lack of nutrition, and gaunt from lack of drugs.

"You look like shit."

"You're a fuckin' genius."

Mello looked away and out of the dingy window where the only view was the opposite side of the building in what might once have been intended to be a court yard. Now, only old dumpsters and a broken bench sat enclosed by the crumbling walls. Frankly, Mello didn't understand why Matt would pick something so low-quality to live in. He glanced over as the other spoke again.

"Turn the T.V. on."

"Why?"

"I need the noise."

"So talk to me."

"I don't want to talk."

"You're talking right now.'

"Will you shut the fuck up?"

"No."

Groaning with frustration, Matt rolled over, tightening the sheets around himself and burying his face into his pillow. He felt absolutely disgusting, like he'd jumped into a pond and come out covered in pond shit and then had it all plastic-wrapped to him. It was a very unpleasant feeling. "How long has it been?"

"Going on thirty-eight hours now."

"Fuck."

Matt closed his eyes, shivering against the mattress, his fingers clenched hard around the edges of his sheets. This sucked. This really, really sucked. It hadn't even been two fucking days yet and he already felt like he was going to cave. Personally, Matt thought that he had picked the worst person in the world to be his company while detoxing. He wasn't as heavy a user as heavy users went, but always in his day's itinerary there was something, even a little something.

Wrapped up in his thoughts, his desperate desire for something to curb his poisonous appetite, something to distract him from the desire, Matt hardly noticed the hand that touched his head. Just by his temple, leather-clad fingertips rested against his tangled and kinked red hair, lightly and uncertainly, barely touching him at all.

"I'm sorry."

Matt opened his eyes and turned over. Mello's hand hovered mere inches from his nose. "… What?"

"Don't make me say it again," Mello stated sternly, glaring at Matt in a way that contradicted his words. In fact, his tone of voice had done the same; he didn't sound sorry in the least bit—but he wasn't being sarcastic. That, Matt knew, was the important part.

"Are you sick?"

"Shut up." Matt watched as Mello reclined, hardly comfortably, back against a pillow sitting pitifully against the wall behind the head of the bed. His hands sat interlocked against the waist of his leather pants, one gloved, one bandaged. "You're such a little shit. Do you really think I could sit here like this and watch you and be a cold bastard about it all?"

Matt didn't appear to have anything to say for himself.

"Really, Matt. I mean, fuck it," Mello laughed exasperatedly. "I've known you since we were fucking kids and now you're some crack-addicted junkie having a shit fit on his bed? Do you really expect me to fucking look at you, throwing up and shit and whimpering and sweating and crying in your fucking sleep and not give a damn?"

"I didn't… I don't know. Yeah."

Honest to god, Matt had always seen Mello as untouchable. Untouchable and never vulnerable and always strong. Maybe that was why it seemed so damn important to him when he had to drag the immortal one out of a demolished building.

Scoffing, Mello answered, "Guess you don't know me very well."

"Better than anyone else," Matt shot back, almost bitterly. Gritting his teeth more out of physical discomfort than anything else, he rolled back on his side again, his back facing away from Mello.

Silence reigned in the air, unusually uneasy for the lack of video game sound effects, whirring technology, the quiet _pfffft _of Matt's cigarettes or the deliberate snaps of Mello's chocolate. Silence. Mello considered the words of the single friend he had, hardly pleased at all that Matt had pinned him in such a manner. As much as he hated to admit it, Matt was right. He did know Mello better than anyone else except Mello himself. And even then, there were times where he wouldn't credit his own understanding.

"Why the hell did you do all this?"

"What, all the shit?" A snort. "You're the genius. You tell me."

"Coping mechanism," Mello instantly responded, not at all caught off-guard by the other's facetious answer.

"If you know, why are you asking?"

The blonde closed his eyes and pursed his lips into a thin, annoyed line. More than annoyed, though, he was frustrated. He had never expected Matt to be pleasant while detoxing, but he was too used to the other rolling over in his face and never quite speaking his mind. This much.

"Because, Matt. I need to hear it out of your fucking mouth."

"Ego boost?"

"No!" Mello would have punched Matt if they were standing or Matt wasn't half delirious from being sober. "Just it's something I need to hear, okay?" Reiteration, he didn't want to say, that he actually did mean something to the other. Reassurance that he hadn't just been used and exploited, as the mafia had tried to do with him, and as his mother's friends had previous. Absently, more out of habit than anything else, Mello's fingers rose to his rosary where they turned the cross over and over, twisting the chain up to his throat.

"I already told you why."

"Because you needed something."

"Right."

"That's not really an answer."

"I was coping with the fact that you were gone because I'm a pussy and my life sucked without you. Because everything reminded me of you somehow and made me feel good like you do because you're Mello and you're freedom like fuckin' Lassie," Matt deadpanned. "Happy now?"

Mello's fingers twirled his rosary around the other way.

"Yeah, whatever."

Matt snorted, shifting uncomfortably before tugging the sheets tightly over his shoulder. "Fuck you Mello. Being all 'I need to hear it out of your mouth' and then being all fucking 'whatever' about it. Just fuck you."

"It's not like that."

"Then what the fuck is it like!"

Silence.

Mello swallowed, wishing dearly for a chocolate bar. He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of Matt, the sheets twisted around him and dirty on the bed, the small bedroom seeming to cave in on itself with the tension reigning in the air. "It's… just…" Mello again was at a loss for words. Secretly, he hated Matt for making him lose his tongue. No one else was capable of the feat, yet Matt did it so often and so without effort.

"Damn it, Mello. You've just got to always have this badass act all the fucking time but I know you better than that. Can't you at least just pretend that I, you know, really have known you since we were fucking eight years old?"

"It's not that easy, Matt."

"Yes it is, God damn you. And I really fucking mean it, take your fucking rosary and shove it up your Catholic ass Mello. You and your high and mighty asshole act with your 'oh God is my Savior' and 'oh God is my guidance'— well did God drag your ass out of a blown up building? I don't fucking think so."

Mello's fingers were white around his rosary as the other fought his way out of the mess of sweat-stained sheets, rolling off the bed and quite ungracefully tumbling to the floor, where he proceeded to stand shakily. The effort was not aided in the slightest by the fact that he was madly shaking from a coldness that ate him from the spine outwards. "Matt, sit down."

"No."

"You're just being stubborn."

"Like you're just being an asshole."

Mello found himself standing, his gaze intently set on the other. "Come on. Just sit down. You're shaking."

"I'm mother fucking cold!"

"Then get back into bed."

"Fuck you."

"Is that all you can say?"

"Yes. Now fuck you."

They were now mere inches apart, far too close for comfort but somehow too far away. Matt watched Mello sternly, seeming almost to evaluate him as they stood like enemies in his dingy apartment bedroom. There was never a more unorthodox situation, Matt had to say.

And then suddenly, so suddenly, Matt felt lips on his.

For three seconds, he had to wonder if there was acid in the air and if he was hallucinating because of it. But then Mello was a few inches away again, looking expectantly at him as though there was really anything to say after that. "Now get back into bed."

Matt complied, not because he wanted to, but because he was busy trying to think of something to say and Mello had taken advantage of that to push him down. He was trying to say something that fully expressed his feelings, but stringing together words was something of an immeasurably difficult feat at the moment. In the end he said something either completely fitting or something completely idiotic: "What the fuck?"

"Sexual tension," Mello replied ever so coolly, taking his place on the bed beside Matt.

Bewildered, the redhead looked over at his current company, managing few words. "… What the fuck?"

Evidently annoyed, Mello rolled his eyes and repeated himself. "Sexual tension. You don't expect me not to do anything about it, do you?" When Matt failed to respond fast enough, if he was going to respond at all, the blonde waved off the conversation as though he hadn't just kissed his friend of eleven years. He closed his eyes, again blocking out the sight of the room, the mussed sheets, and Matt, who looked like he'd just been assaulted by a stranger.

Matt regarded the other for a little while longer, evaluating him in some manner. He almost felt as though Mello weren't really sitting beside him, reclining against the headboard, but really a stranger instead. Maybe it was the fact that when they were kids, they hadn't many opportunities to kiss or experience 'sexual tension', but Matt didn't feel at all as though he knew a Mello who would kiss him out of the blue.

Mello had always been more than a placebo.

The gamer leaned over and planted a kiss square on Mello's lips, confidently proud of himself; accomplished, at least.

The blonde's eyes instantaneously snapped open. "What the hell?"

"''Fuck', Mello, just say 'fuck'."

"What the fuck, then, Matt?"

"Sexual tension."

"There isn't any now."

"So?"

"So that was uncalled for."

"I can't kiss you just because I want to?" Matt questioned teasingly.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

Mello sighed. "Because you just can't, okay?"

Smirking, Matt further leaned in, if only to piss the other off. "You don't really have an answer, do you?"

"Shut up."

Matt kissed Mello again, his chaste kiss not so fast this time. Pulling back, that smirk remained visible on his lips still. "Yeah. You don't."

"What about it?"

"So you want me to, don't you?"

"No."

"Yeah you do. When was the last time you got laid?"

"That's personal."

"Uh huh." Matt grinned. "Long time ago, wasn't it?"

"Matt, I was a mafia boss up until I blew my fucking self up."

"Right." Matt laughed. "I forgot." It was only too obvious that he hadn't, though. The idea of Mello running around screwing little mafia whores wasn't exactly one that made for genuine laughter.

"Jealous?"

Matt snorted. "Yeah, actually."

A hand on his hip, slight pressure of Mello's weight, and a few seconds later: "Well, don't be."

Almost experimentally, Matt pursed his just-kissed lips together, warily eyeing Mello, who had still not returned to his own personal space area. Matt took this as invitation to reach up and gingerly touch the half-healed burns on Mello's face. They were bared because Mello had refused to wear gauze on his cheek any longer, a decision that Matt found stupid, but quite useful at the present time. "Yeah?" he mused, seemingly fascinated with the damaged skin. By the time he took his hand away, Mello was kissing him again, almost forcefully this time. There wasn't much forcing to be done, though, given that you couldn't force the willing.

"Mello," he said when he felt fingertips on the sensitive skin of his lower stomach; Mello's hands stopped near his hips.

"Yeah?"

"What're we doing?"

Apparently, the question wasn't one that merited an answer, much more than the mutter of the words 'sexual tension' at any rate. However, Matt didn't think that Mello really meant it. 'Sexual tension' seemed to be a thing of the past.

As things were, though, Matt seemed to have no qualms with Mello running his fingertips up his ribcage so infuriatingly slow that he could nearly be called careful. Mello's fingers on Matt's skin, his lips on his neck, his slow, steady breaths ghosting across his collar bones were almost too torturous. Matt still had no idea what the _fuck_ they were doing, but he was trying his very best not to question it. He had always placed full trust in Mello, and now, he saw no reason to challenge tradition.

"Never was the drugs, was it?" Mello asked him, close to his ear. He shook his head.

"No."

"Did you ever want this?"

"I don't know," Matt answered, feeling feeble in his answer but only because he honestly didn't know. Granted, he'd thought about it; the warmth of Mello's body so close that it was feeding off his, hard, quick kisses, slow, taunting hands, but he'd never quite imagined it like this. Not with him half-mad and Mello half-gone, not with them on an old L.A. apartment's bed, dirty with the effort of detox. Detox had never been a part of it anyways. Detox, if anything, was the complete opposite of this.

"What did you want?"

"I don't know, Mello," he stated levelly, feeling the dregs of beaten down anger churning again in his gut. Picking up on his irritation, Mello kissed him again, though more experimentally than to actually placate him. After all these years, Mello was still just toying with him. Matt could tell. "What're you doing this for?"

"To see."

"See what?"

"How sick you are."

Matt's blood was ice water in his veins. He tensed under the other's hands, his head suddenly reeling. Each chaste kiss, the guarded answers, the sudden movement and slow hands and the quietly spoken words—and Mello said:

"To see how sick I am."

* * *

**AN: **For anyone who asked me if there was going to be any MxM action; well, there you go. I told you it would be unorthodox. You guys should know by now that I am not a 'lovey dovey let's confess our great affection for each other' kind of writer. Anyways. The strange thing was that I actually got a review saying something to the effect of how Mello ought to say he was sorry… at the time, I'd already written the 'I'm sorry' part and I definitely forgot about it. XD Expect much slower updates for now, this is the last pre-written chapter I have and frankly, I don't have much time to write. Most of this fic I actually wrote in the summer before school, goes to show you how much I can get done during the school year. … Please don't kill me. XD I love you guys. 


	14. mostly medication

_I'm in the basement, you're in the sky._

One day, three hours, forty-seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds.

Detox was ruined.

There wasn't much expecting it to_ not_ be, given the implications of yesterday, but Matt found himself feeling slightly guilty about it anyways. Completely and honestly, he didn't know why he felt guilty. It was as though he really owed anything to Mello, especially not after yesterday. Especially. If anything, Mello owed something to _him_—not that he would ever say that out loud.

Comfortably and artificially confident, Matt inhaled off the last of his cigarette before grinding it out on the rusty railing of the concrete balcony. Reaching into the pocket of his vest, he pulled out a slightly crumpled box and retrieved another. He put it to his lips and lit it, flicking the ashes off the end.

The door behind him slid open.

"Matt."

In what Matt would like to call a 'strategic choice', he didn't respond. Didn't turn around.

"Matt," Mello repeated again, his voice sterner this time in his impatience.

"Do you realize how fast you can get good coke in this city?"

Matt could literally hear the other's teeth grinding together in irritation. He took sick pleasure out of it, knowing at least that he still had some semblance of control. Maybe not so much control over Mello, definitely not control over Mello, but he could at least dictate some of what was going on, something that he was a part of.

"I don't know, Matt," the blonde replied testily. "I've never had to try."

The smoker snorted, again tapping ashes from the end of his cigarette. "Oh, right, hot-shot mafia boss." He stared intently at the white filter between his gloved fingers before bringing it to his lips and inhaling slowly through it. "I forget these things." A plume of smoke curled over their heads.

"You're going to die early," Mello stated flatly in reference to the packaged cancer in Matt's pocket.

"Not earlier than you'd make me."

There was truth in silence, and silence in truth.

"Matt."

"You were a real asshole yesterday, I hope you know."

"Yeah, I know." Mello moved to stand beside the redhead on the balcony. Below them, the L.A. street was teeming with the menial activity of rats and their equivalents, neither of which merited more than just a passing glance. "It's the truth, though."

"What?"

"We're sick."

"I think we've known that."

The elder pursed his lips together momentarily, his gaze strict as he stared down beneath them at the crawling street below. "Too long, actually."

Matt scoffed, a short, bitter smile slowly rising to turn the corner of his lips. He nodded in agreement, his small motion barely noticeable. "So you'd kiss me just for that?"

"No," Mello responded flatly, turning to glance at the other, but looking away again and back down to the street. "Sexual tension, remember?"

Matt wasn't sure if this was a joke or not, but he smiled anyways. It seemed that these days, anything was worth smiling at. "Yeah, I remember." He took a drag off of his cigarette, letting the breath out slowly though a tiny crack between his lips as though it were sweet air he thought that he'd never taste again. "How long have we been friends, Mello?"

"About eleven years. Why?"

Matt shrugged. "Just wondering, I guess." The truth was, he wasn't 'just wondering'. Wammy's kids never 'just wondered' about anything. He knew it, and Mello knew it, and he didn't waste any more time in pretending that they didn't. "Do you ever wanna?"

"Have sex?"

"Yeah."

"Sure." Mello shrugged. It wasn't an offer. It was just the blatant truth. "We've known each other too long and done too much random shit together. We've never done anything crazy, but I mean hell Matt, it's us."

Snorting, Matt took another drag off his cigarette. "Do you really think we're sick?"

"Sure. In more ways than just that, though."

Matt looked up and considered Mello for a moment. His friend was leaning against the railing in a nonchalant kind of fashion, staring off at the city line with a sort of dead gaze that betrayed the fact that he wasn't at all interested in what he was looking at. Matt stubbed out his cigarette again on the railing and flicked it down to the cracked concrete below them. "Let's go inside," he said, turning without waiting for Mello to follow, taking for granted that he would, and walking back to his bedroom. Upon reaching his destination, he threw himself onto the dirty bed still smelling of sweat and tears. He kicked the sheets and blankets off, an easily achievable feat given that they were already haphazardly strewn around anyways. Stretching out on the bare mattress, he had just barely closed his eyes when he heard Mello shut the door as he walked in. "Should I be worried?"

"That I shut the door? No."

He gave a hollow laugh. "Wanna c'mere?"

"Not particularly."

Mello did it anyways.

Matt rolled over onto his side and tentatively put an arm around Mello's upper chest, half-expecting to get pistol whipped again, but the blow never came. Instead, Mello placidly laid there, seeming almost to contemplate the warmth of another body so close to his. Silence befell them a little while longer before Matt shifted, moving up to the bare skin around Mello's neck, moving to the break between smooth skin and burned flesh on his collar bone. His lips gently rest there for a moment, doing nothing more than just that. Being still.

Stillness.

"Matt, why do you put up with me?"

There was more silence.

"You're my friend, I guess."

Mello snorted. "That's an ass of a reason."

Matt smiled bemusedly against the blonde's collarbones, feeling him shift slightly in response to the bare movement on his skin. "Yeah, I guess it is. But it's the truth. I guess."

"You guess?"

"I guess. I put up with you because you're you." Matt rather experimentally inched his lips up Mello's neck, barely pressing a kiss against the pale jugular before him. Mello seemed to pay him no mind.

"And who would I be if I weren't?"

Left to his own devices, Matt moved his hands down both of Mello's sides, resting at the hardly exposed skin of his hips. "Not you."

"Obviously."

More silence.

Then, "What about you?"

At this point, Mello turned his attention to Matt, only now just seeming to notice the fact that the redhead had his hands on him. He took a moment to assess this new development in their position before answering, systematically looking from the other's goggled eyes to his lips, his face, his casually angled body, his comfortably relaxed arms and the hands so idly placed on his hips. This was nothing. Matt, as always, was being a joker—but a joker in a different sense somehow. Now. Somehow changed. "Why do I put up with you?"

"Yeah."

"Because…" Mello stopped to gather his words, realizing then that he hadn't any. He didn't quite understand why he put up with the other either. Why he could look over Matt without feeling disgusted by their proximity; why he could tolerate Matt's hands where anyone else's would have been sawed off; why he could stand watching Matt whine in his sleep, listening to Matt ask him why his mother wasn't a princess and why his father wasn't an astronaut. Or a knight. Or a hero.

"Because you're my friend," Mello answered with a tone of finality. There wasn't much else that he could say; and he knew it by the self-satisfied smirk on the red-head's face that just said 'I told you so' in silent syllables. At this point, Mello was hardly surprised when Matt leaned forward to close the mere inches between them, the chasm separating them, the valley that held their pasts so intertwined. He was hardly surprised when he felt the audacity of Matt's tongue against his lips, the taste of fake cinnamon mingling with nicotine in his mouth. He wasn't even surprised when he found himself pressing back, his fingers against his friend's ribcage, his fingertips curling against the fabric of that familiar striped shirt.

They weren't lovers.

They were never lovers, they wouldn't ever be lovers, and they couldn't ever be lovers.

This world was far too malicious for anyone to ever love. Perhaps in a land far from their own, perhaps in a dream of perfect reality, someone could love someone and together they'd live in someone's perfect suburban home, but that just didn't seem like real life for Mello and Matt. Not for them, not in the gamer's dirty L.A. apartment, not on their naked mattress, not in their dingy room that still smelled of failure.

And yet somehow, Mello didn't mind when he felt the other's careful fingers slip gingerly past the bandages on his healing wounds. Only lovers stayed locked at the mouth, only lovers fiddled with each other's clothes, only lovers found themselves escaping into the darkness, the comfort of uninhibited actions; but they weren't that.

Not lovers.

Not them.

What seemed like hours later but couldn't have been, Matt found Mello breathing against his neck, a gloved hand low on his chest, just in the hollow between his ribcage. The sun had either disappeared behind a cloud or they were so lost in the comfort that light didn't matter anymore. Mello's bandaged hand was softly resting by his neck, fingertips balanced on his collar bone, his thumb feeling the structure of the bones running up his throat. The blonde's knees were on either side of his hips, his weight holding Matt against the stripped mattress of the old bed. Silence.

The room was warmer than it had been, hotter, tenser, tighter, smaller. Matt had forgotten, maybe never really known, how good skin to skin contact felt. They were racing across electric fields, now, more improper than decent. Matt didn't remember when or how that'd happened, but somehow in their descent into this deep, velvety abyss of comfort, that was where they were. Silence. Unveiled silence.

Mello's body, bared and so close to his made him weak with the concept. Friends had never been this close, but lovers had never been so far apart. He didn't know what that made them, but with Mello's fingers on his throat, Mello's hand on his chest, delicately handling him when he could so easily crush his windpipe and shatter his ribs, somehow, the thought was exhilarating. In some sick, twisted, nearly macabre fashion, Matt found the paradox so inviting.

"Matt."

So the silence was broken.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing?"

"I… I don't know." Matt looked down, down at Mello's hands placed so gingerly on his body. He couldn't help but to think how bizarre it was to consider Mello being soft and ginger and even compassionate somewhere down there, but he pushed those words out of his mind because they weren't the Mello he knew. Mello was brash, harsh, cold, exciting; full of life Matt had never known. Now, they were learning something new again. Matt felt so wrong. So wrong. So excited to be incorrect. "I don't know," he laughed nervously. Nervously, his fingers fluttering down to Mello, fluttering down to his hips to touch. "But don't stop. Fuck it, there's no reason to stop."

"No reason?"

"No."

Mello swallowed. He had never been the uncertain one. Matt had always been the uncertain one. Matt had always been the one to be two steps behind. Mello, while he was used to being in the lead, found that he had no idea what to do with his hands. He had never been in a position where he wouldn't just be able to reach down and close his fingers around the throat of the person beneath him, crush all life out of him—but that wasn't what he was going to do to Matt. That wasn't at all what he was going to do to Matt. In some strange fashion, Matt was too much his friend. Too much his almost lover.

He reached down and pressed his lips tight against Matt's—tight, so tight, so hard that it hurt—tight, so hard that it almost bruised. And he didn't care. He didn't care that he'd bear the marks of the other. Didn't care that this was just his friend, supposedly. Didn't care that Matt was some crack whore, that they were on some dirty apartment bed, didn't care how close they were and didn't care how their hands ran up and down teach other's bodies, exploring things that they should have known for so long yet known so little. And there, there on the naked, naked mattress of the L.A. bed they learned. They remembered.

And the fire burned.

* * *

**AN: **What the hell is this? They get action _again_? Real action this time (sort of)? Goodnesscake. would you look at me. Well. This chapter was written fairly quickly (two weeks is incredibly fast for my dismal six pages). I actually got stuck and had to read it out loud and record it. I actually first spontaneously spoke the scene from after Matt says 'Yeah?' towards the end. xD And then I tweaked it and there you are. If you can't figure out what just happened, then... you won't be able to figure out a lot of my writing. annnyway. Let me know what you guys think. (: Thank you for being patient with me and reviewing and all. I really do appreciate it. 


	15. the closest to confessionals

_Golden light means nothing more to me than flames licking the walls._

Morning.

4:43 in the morning.

Matt would not call this 'sunlight streaming through the windows in perfect panes across their silk sheets'. What Matt would call this was 'freezing-their-naked-asses-off in the middle of winter on a stripped bed with cloud-covered moonlight sneaking into their bedroom in an attempt to get a glance at what they were doing'. At the present time, that wasn't much more than nothing. They were huddled back to back like each didn't want to look at the other but still needed to steal his warmth. Mello was asleep. Matt was awake.

He stared at the plaster wall ahead of him, looking at the cracks just beneath the window and wondering how many ants would seep through them in the summer to escape the heat. Probably more than enough to drive him insane—given that he stayed in the crap hole that long. This was only temporary.

The redhead rolled over onto his back, now looking at the ceiling. He could hardly see the difference between the wall and the blank, white sky overhead, but really, it didn't matter. It all seemed like a broken expanse to him.

This was not what he would call the perfect morning after.

Rolling out of bed, he bunched up the sheets and blankets in his arms, crawled back onto the mattress beside Mello, and carelessly threw the fabric over them in an attempt to block out the frigid winter air. Mello stirred.

"Mngh… Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"What the fuck are you doing now?"

Matt snorted. He'd figured that Mello's first words would be nothing kinder than that. Turning over to the correct position (slightly curled with his back towards Mello again, spine out like a fish prepared to be gutted), Matt shrugged although he was sure that the blonde couldn't see. "Nothing."

Mello had never exactly been a light sleeper, nor was he one to easily succumb to the less-than-safe clutches of unconscious rest once woken. He sat up and glanced at the clock, groaning and running a hand back through his hair. In the dim moonlight, Matt would liken him to a waking predator. "What the hell are you doing awake at five in the fuckin' morning?"

"It's not five yet."

"Yeah, whatever."

"I couldn't sleep."

"Like hell you couldn't sleep."

Matt laughed hollowly. Figured Mello would know, figured that he would have said something like that. Mello, after all, had fallen to sleep with Matt pressed up against his bare chest, pressed up against his clothingless body, pressed up between and against his thighs. Matt laughed at the memory that was so tauntingly fresh and laughed again at the fact that he was now curled up with nothing but scratchy mattress and cold blanket wrapped around him. "I 'unno. Just thinking, I guess."

"You guess?" Mello was sitting up now, hunched over with the sheets in his lap, loosely draped around his waist and hips. He glanced over to the other, his friend, his almost-lover, and saw nothing but the deep red of Matt's hair against his pillow. "Something's up."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Between the sex and the drugs (or lack thereof) and Kira and this stupid apartment and Mello stupidly getting himself stupid torched, of course something was up. With certain doom looming over the horizon (even though they were invincible, for certain), with a lack of video games because he had to be doing 'work' and with more instant noodles than he cared for in their future, of _course_ something was up.

"What's wrong?" Mello questioned flatly, leaning forward slightly with his hands on his knees on top of the blanket.

"Nothing," Matt answered, although he was sure that the correct response would be something closer to 'everything'. "Just stuff. I guess."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Stuff," the redhead replied rather firmly, now stalling more than anything else. He hadn't ever known Mello to be so goddamned persistent, but he supposed that this was what friends did. They pushed at each other until they finally gave in. And that made sense. They were friends. They always had been friends.

And nothing more.

"Matt, quit being such a surreptitious bitch."

"Throwing out the fancy vocabulary now?"

"Only if you understand it."

"Burn."

There was a moment of quiet, just silence in the air. Silence in which Matt laid there on the dirty mattress, vainly trying to fight off the cold of the room with just his blanket and the near nonexistent heat of Mello's closest leg. Then, the silence was broken once more by Mello's irritated query. "Really, Matt. What's up?"

The gamer rolled onto his back, rubbing at his ungoggled eyes if only to revel in the fact that he could, that he wasn't wearing them. He wasn't sure where they were, exactly, or even when they'd come off, but that mattered little at that point. All that mattered was that his blue-green eyes had a clear, straight shot to the ceiling and he could hardly make out the outline of Mello's big, blonde head.

"Just… I'unno. Everything. Did it ever occur to you that we could die doing this crazy shit you do?"

Mello snorted, though said nothing for a while. He pursed his lips into a hard expression and gazed down at the corner of the bed, seeming to not even consider what Matt had said. "Since when did that concern you?" he questioned finally, hardly seeming to care. The redhead knew his friend better than that, though, and could tell that the other certainly was bothered by the thought by the way that Mello kept staring directly in front of him instead of relaxing his gaze.

"Since I realized that I don't want to die, I guess."

"Most people don't, dip shit."

Matt shrugged again, breathing a slow, steady exhale up at the ceiling. "We can't just find some nice place to settle down and plant a vegetable garden or somethin', can we?"

"What the fuck are you talking about now?"

"Just the idea of doing something normal, for once."

"We weren't meant to be normal," Mello responded, some sort of deep resentment hiding in his throat.

"Weren't we though?" Matt questioned, still choosing to interrogate the ceiling instead of Mello. "Weren't you ever normal, once? Before Wammy's and all that?" Wammy's, after all, was not what Matt would consider 'normal'. Life after Wammy's was hardly a piece of cake either.

Mello's reply was heavy and final. "No."

Interested, Matt dragged his eyes away from the ceiling with considerable force, looking over at his friend. "Really?" he prompted. In all his years of knowing Mello, they had never really divulged into the other's past, not even when they had discussed Matt's at great length.

"Really," the blonde answered, only looking back over at Matt after a long while. He seemed to be able to tell that Matt's curiosity, still strong while rarely exercised, would not be waved away. "My mother was a slut. We didn't live well. That's all you need to know."

"People called my mom a hussy for not marrying my dad," he offered quietly, as though this were some sort of game where he had to keep the status quo equal. Really, all he wanted to do was let Mello know that he wasn't entirely alone.

Mello snorted as though he didn't care the slightest for what Matt had to say. "It doesn't matter," he stated. "It's not as simple as that. You lived in a fucking castle compared to my hell hole. You wouldn't know." His words were accusations biting at Matt's skin. The gamer was quiet.

Finally, when he spoke, his words were slow and measured. He was acting like he was talking to a bomb that might go off at any moment if it weren't placated. "I guess I wouldn't," he mused, his words oddly measured, "but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to know, Mello. You know everything there is to know about me, and I don't even know if I can call you a friend."

"Of course you can, you idiot," Mello snapped, but Matt waved him off.

"I'm serious. I don't know half the shit there is to know about you. I don't even feel like you trust me. You just tell me what I need to know to do my job and then tell me to get on with it," Matt stated, pressing his lips into a grim line. "And then all this shit. You get yourself blown up by _my_ work, you want me to drop drugs just like that, and then…" He broke off, though it had never really bothered him to think of or say it before. "And then… last night. Whatever we did. I just don't get it, Mello. I really don't."

The older male was silent for a long while, glancing from Matt to the wrinkled state of the bed sheets and blankets strewn upon them. Them and their bare bodies, just inches away from each other across the bed and yet with no warmth of a fellow human being to be found. "You know I'd trust you with more than my life, Matt," he stated hoarsely. "I trust you with my pride, my success. I depend on you." Mello almost sounded like someone was choking him as he spoke. "I've… Hell, I mean…"

In front of Matt, Mello had been _vulnerable._ Broken, battered. Enraged, estranged. As kids he'd been upset, crying, afraid. That was more than he'd ever shown anyone, and Matt wanted to ask for more? Mello couldn't even admit all those things that he had been in their shared past, how could he even speak of things that he'd been through alone? "There are just some things I don't want to relive, Matt," he stated firmly.

The redhead in his company looked at him for a long while before finally resigning to stare at the threadbare carpet covering the floor by them instead. "Okay," he answered, seeming very unpleased, but nonetheless committed. There was a moment more of silence before Matt, with an air of restarting the day, threw the covers from his very naked body and strode over to the closet.

"Decency, Matt," Mello grumbled, turning his eyes away from his rather uninhibited friend only to be appropriate. He, unlike some, knew how to have some dignity.

Chuckling, Matt drew out his usual attire, a striped shirt, boxers and a pair of faded jeans finding their way onto his person quickly enough. After a moment of groping semi-blindly around the room, the gamer procured his goggles and adjusted them to comfort over his eyes. "Yeah yeah," a smile was growing on his lips, "just squeeze your ass into that damn leather of yours and come get some breakfast before we have to do work," he said, tossing his words flippantly over his shoulder as he jauntily left the room.

The elder muttered something about responsibility and how they ought to have been doing work hours ago—but then realized that it was scarcely six in the morning. The sudden desire to ignore what Matt had just said and simply go back to bed struck him, but he realized that with the increasing intensity of the Kira investigation, time was not something that he ought to waste away so carelessly in bed. Scowling, yet with a smirk dangerously close to his lips, he was reminded quite sharply of the previous night. Somehow though, Mello found himself quite unable to think _that_ had been any loss of time.

* * *

**AN:** been a while, hasn't it? too long, if you ask me. I thank everyone for being ever so patient with me, I couldn't have asked for more. Hopefully you won't realize what a disarray my brain is right now... so... I hope I can still continue to do you guys justice here. (: Thanks again and err.. hopefully the next update won't be so far away.


	16. loathing: more addict for drugs pt III

_Still not good enough._

Things had progressed at an alarmingly rapid rate over the course of the following weeks. They had procured an extraordinary amount of information on Kira and the current L, given that it had long been since Mello's suspicion (as well as Near's, Matt would confess to know) that Kira had gained L's title and was now working with the very task force that had been devised to capture him. It had been that way for a long while, probably since the original L had been killed. Mostly, though, their attentions had spanned to Kiyomi Takada, Kira's spokeswoman who, Matt would never admit to the other's face, was quite attractive.

In those weeks, Mello had given up on trying to harass Matt into quit using after something just short of a fight. It had been late evening, just after dinner (which could hardly be called such; it consisted of instant macaroni and dented soda cans) when Matt had shaken a couple of pills from a small bottle he kept tucked in his pocket at nearly all times.

"What's that?"

"What's what?" Matt questioned rather casually, swallowing two small pills and washing them down with a swig of slightly flat root beer.

"That," Mello deftly responded, nodding to the bottle that Matt was slipping away again.

"Nothing."

"It's not 'nothing'. You've been carrying it around more than your stupid video game thing lately."

The noted gamer grimaced, wishing that Mello had been too wrapped up in his usual obsessive Kira investigating to have noticed. "Methadone," he admitted, seeing as there was little point in lying. Matt hadn't really ever been the deceitful type anyways—between Near and Mello, there had always been too much the air of secrecy at Wammy's for him to handle adding to it. "Keeps me from… well, you know." He felt like a foolish twelve-year-old, unable to say the very thing that ailed him. Somewhat abashedly, he picked up his laptop from the floor in an attempt to do something that Mello would find productive. Unfortunately, his feint didn't buy him very much time.

"What's the use of quitting if you're not really going to quit?" the blonde demanded of him scathingly, throwing down his empty can, half-contemplating kicking it in frustration. He, however, decided that the age for that was gone and he wasn't going to lower himself to such idiocy. Instead, he threw himself to a corner of the couch, resigning to stare pointedly at Matt in hopes of glaring him into quitting.

This tactic, of course, had never worked with Matt. Not since they'd been friends since before puberty at Wammy's; Matt had known for a very long time now that while there was generally something to be feared coming after Mello's glares, if he just didn't react, he was far better off. "I can't just… quit, Mello." He was, at the very least, a strange case. He was using both an opiate and a stimulant, and while he would be reluctant to admit it, his lax nature was actually absent from their work and helping Mello was causing him more strain than he'd like. "It's harder than that."

The blonde snorted, hardly seeming to be satisfied with this halfhearted answer. Nevertheless, he consented to grabbing the laptop that Matt was holding, dragging it into his leather clad lap and rather violently jabbing keys that yielded to his fingers as though they were capable of feeling his bubbling inner fury. "Whatever. You just need to get your act together," he snapped finally, dismissing the matter without an ounce of forgiveness.

Matt, however, deemed that this was as good as he could come off and hastily pursued the subject off of his rather unhealthy habits. "Together for what?" he questioned, glancing rather curiously over to Mello who had found a chocolate bar from somewhere in the mess nearby and was snapping a corner off of it.

"I've been thinking."

"Yeah?" Matt prompted, all too used to playing this game.

"Hal's been telling me what Near's up to."

Matt fidgeted slightly. He had always wondered why the blonde chose to figure Near out through Hal Lidner when Matt could have just as easily gotten the information. He, after all, was on good terms with Near. All the same, he figured that he ought to be grateful. While he wouldn't question or deny anything that Mello asked of him, he rather liked the fact that he was 'sort of' friends with Near. It went against everything that Mello appeared to believe in; Mello absolutely hated Near. And yet, Matt found that he enjoyed that liking Near was close to rebellion. "Yeah? And?"

"She hasn't said anything about Mikami."

Matt rather thought that this would be obvious. Hal, while she did seem to fancy Mello enough to tell him about Near's investigation, was a woman of fair loyalty and Near had claimed it first. He said nothing, however, to disrupt Mello's train of thought. "And so…."

"So, I think the bigger part of Near's plan's got to do with him."

"Right." At this point, Matt was just agreeing to see where the conversation would go. He found his mind half wandering off to the next level of Super Mario on his Game Boy. He was perhaps too obvious in his lack of attention, though, because Mello soon found it necessary to use his free hand to snap mere inches away from Matt's eyes.

"Pay attention," he demanded, sneering somewhat in annoyance. "You've been keeping an eye on him, right?"

The gamer shrugged nonchalantly to express his disbelief that Mello would question such a thing. "'Course. The guy takes a set route wherever he goes. It's easy to hack the city's surveillance to track him."

Mello waved the other's comment off. "Nevermind that, I don't care how you do it, just that it's done." He paused here to linger thoughtfully on the edge of his chocolate bar, letting the candy melt on his lips from where he licked it off before continuing. "Remember on the subway that one time?"

Now that his brain had been employed, Matt was slightly more attentive. "Where he wrote in the notebook and killed that guy? Yeah."

"And remember the other guy on the cell phone?"

Matt snorted. "Near's man? Yeah. He's not too inconspicuous, is he?" Reclining against the couch, Matt raised his goggled eyes to stare at the ceiling above him, seeming to admire the cracks in the tinted surface. "He's been tailing that Teru guy for ages. He's not really focusing on Mikami now, is he?"

"No. Near's having him see if the notebook's real. That's the only reason why he'd tail someone for so long."

"Yeah, and?"

"What are the chances that Mikami hasn't noticed the tail?"

"Slim."

"And what are the chances that he'd openly use the notebook in front of someone he knew was tailing him?"

"Slimmer."

"So what are the chances that the notebook's real?"

"Slimmest."

Mello fell silent for a moment, gnawing on his chocolate bar in thought now that he'd more or less reviewed the situation with Matt. Whatever Near was doing, it wasn't as though he was verifying the authenticity of the notebook just for kicks. Something was going to happen soon; he'd have to see if he could coax it out of Hal Lidner.

"Mel'?"

The blonde grimaced. "Don't call me that," he responded, half rolling his eyes. "What?"

"What're you thinking?"

"Just thinking about what Near's up to. Have to stay one step ahead," he murmured, slipping back into his thoughts now that he had seemed to decide that what Matt was talking about was worth very little attention. The other seemed to catch the gist of his attitude and found satisfaction on his laptop instead. Mello was planning something and Matt didn't think that it was his place to figure out what it was until the elder himself decided that it was time.

Nevertheless, it was slightly disconcerting to try to be the least bit _caring_ about someone who chose to be such an _asshole_ all the time.

As evening drew into the room through the slats of the blinds, Matt found himself sinking into a sort of wry amusement. Always Near. No matter how old they were, whether they were eight or eighteen, no matter what it was, Near was always on Mello's mind. A grim smile crept onto his features as the light in the room started to die; he found himself wondering if Mello's mind ever stopped, not comprehending the idea that Mello might think about things like being number one when they had kissed.

The skin of his fingertips burning, his veins aching to do something forbidden, Matt set aside his laptop, running his tongue over his lower lip before opening his mouth to speak. He stopped abruptly, however, when he realized that no one would be listening; Mello was asleep on the other end of the couch. The redhead seemed to cease breathing and for those quiet seconds; he only looked at Mello in a perplexed kind of way. It didn't matter how much he kidded himself. No matter what they went through, what they endured and what he tolerated, he would never know Mello, not in the way that he wanted to. Not wholly and completely with no secrets, no questions and no complexity.

Scarcely able to breathe for want of something simpler, Matt rose from the couch and, trancelike, crossed the apartment to the beaten balcony just beyond the kitchen. There, under the cover of quickly collapsing dusk, the fiery glow of a cigarette burned to life on the balcony's edge. His lips twitching against the echo of an old child's dream, Matt tasted nicotine as curls of smoke unfurled into the cool evening air.

* * *

**AN: **I've come to the conclusion that, in my early days of pre-written chapters, I have spoiled you all into thinking that I'm different from your average writer in that I update lengthy chapters in a timely manner with great skill. ... I don't. XD Not to mention, I'm really absent minded. So here's a very short chapter that I had fully written a week ago in all of its mediocrity. Thanks again for being patient with me. (:


	17. snapping power lines

_Unbalanced minds always tip the scales._

Golden light washed over their new, though still dingy, apartment in Japan. Both Matt and Mello were already awake, each quietly at work to put Mello's plan into motion. The younger of the two, however, found that his thoughts kept straying from the task at hand and instead to the task still to come. Mello was going to kidnap the most famed face in Japan. His mouth felt dry merely thinking of it and nerves found him yearning for a cigarette.

Kiyomi Takada. They were going to kidnap fucking Kiyomi Takada.

They were going to kidnap someone whose kidnapping would set all of Japan, if not all the world, out to get them. Somehow, Matt failed to see the Wammy genius in this. He thought to say so, but then reconsidered upon remembering how fickle Mello's moods had been lately, and how just now, they were on good terms. That was, Mello wasn't blustering about kicking things around on the floor and Matt was trying to do something productive instead of playing video games to keep the blonde that way.

However, his efforts were much in vain due to the small fact that Mello appeared to have extrasensory powers, in Matt's opinion. The redheaded gamer would like to venture that his friend had the ability to read minds, or, to put it in more sophisticated terms, he was an accomplished legilemens.

"You think this is crazy," Mello stated blankly, his words standing stiffly in the air like cardboard.

Matt deemed it best to not attempt to beat around the proverbial bush. "Yeah. Really crazy," he admitted with no remorse whatsoever.

"Then are you really going to go through with it? Because you shouldn't bullshit me and pretend you are if you're not." Mello sounded as though he honestly believed that Matt would forsake him after so long, would leave him to his own at this very last moment. They were so close to checkmate, and Mello would expect him to drop it all and go? Go where?

Matt snorted, rolling his eyes behind his goggles and shoving his laptop away in distaste. He couldn't work. His mind was reeling. Everything in the apartment reeked of the plan and of Mello and of the blunt insanity that they were about to embark upon. "I'm not bullshitting you, Mello," the redhead replied wearily, "I'm not some fucking pansy who's gonna back out."

"Yeah?" the other demanded, sounding defensive as though Matt had just defied the very logic of his being. "Then why are you acting so much like it?"

He shrugged. "I don't know." He was quiet, staring down the carpet in thought, his eyes picking apart every fiber as though he could turn them over and find some sort of secret answer. "I guess I just don't want us to get killed." Mostly, he didn't want _Mello_ to get killed.

"What kind of shitty answer is that? Are you fucking with me, Matt? I'll kill you if you are."

Somehow, despite the impending doom, despair and peril ahead of them (that Matt likened to the feeling before fighting the final boss stage of a game), there was something humorous about the situation. "Mel', when was the last time you had chocolate?"

"Too long ago." The blonde paused. "… Why?"

A smirk crept across Matt's lips. "It's made you bitchy."

"Shut the fuck up," Mello growled, throwing a pillow at the redhead, which he caught and tossed carelessly aside.

"See? You are."

The older male stood up restlessly, teeming with energy and disgust, but seemingly unable to find words suitable to express his feelings. Finally, he just took a deep breath and said, "You can get us to Takada, can't you?"

Something pulled at his companion's lips, a something that was none too positive. "'Course," he answered. "Dunno what you take me for, some kind of second-rate idiot?"

"Third."

It was amazing how quickly the mood could turn sour. It felt to Matt as though someone had just slammed all the doors shut, pulled the blinds, drawn the curtains and plummeted them into complete and utter darkness where the closest thing to light came from the glow of Mello's inner and strangely rather desperate desire. "Fuck you."

Mello, while he didn't appear to be remorseful in the slightest, looked somewhat tense. His words came inching past a tight tongue, "I didn't mean that."

"Like hell you didn't."

"It shouldn't bother you anyways."

"Shouldn't it?"

"You never gave a damn."

"Still don't."

"Exactly. So why now?"

Matt pursed his lips together, exhaling through the corner of his mouth in an exasperated sort of way. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because you're some dickwad that I'm throwing my life around for and you don't seem to give two shits about anything but beating that goddamned sheep boy."

"I thought he was your friend," Mello replied with an air of mockery.

"He is. And he's still a goddamned sheep boy," he shot back, completely serious in the snarl that seemed to dance alongside his words. "Just like you're my friend and you're still an egoistical, selfish, chocolate-loving freak of a bastard." The redhead shoved the laptop aside, standing briskly from his position on the couch and heading to the bedroom.

Mello stood up after him, stepping forward and grabbing him around the forearm. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To sleep." Matt jerked his arm away, setting off again, but the blonde caught him around the collar this time.

"You still have a plan to carry out, so do it."

"Let go."

"Only if you're going to do your job."

"Mello, I'm fucking serious. Let go."

There was a long pause in which Mello seemed to weigh his options: he could throw Matt back on the couch and force him to do his work at gunpoint, or he could just let the other go and waste time. Somehow, the first option seemed more ridiculous than the second one. He let go, only to shove the gamer in his dismissive frustration.

Matt stalked off to the bedroom where he immediately took to the bed and thrust his face into a pillow, scarcely able to breathe between his parted lips. He didn't know what the fuck that was. One minute he was screwing around with Mello, making jokes, having a laugh, and then the next thing he knew, there was some kind of inner fury bubbling in his lungs that he couldn't explain. It wasn't even the jab at his rank—Mello was right. That didn't bother him at all; he had never cared and never would care for some system that just placed him as a number, evaluated his worth for him. He was never one to care. He was never like that.

But there was something about the way Mello said it. His quickness about it, his apparent honesty in it, the true contempt in that single word that placed Matt below both him and Near.

The redhead turned his head against the pillow, finally breathing the cooler air that still seemed stale in the room. He had a right to be angry, though, didn't he? Mello knew the sheer danger of their mission, ad yet somehow he expected them both to make it out unscathed? Sure, they were geniuses in their own right, but they weren't invincible. It pained Matt to realize it, but this wasn't some video game. They couldn't just pick up a shield or temporary godlike powers. This wasn't a game, this was real and it baffled him to think that he was the one who knew it this time.

The hours ticked by on the clock and still the nineteen-year-old lay awake, listening to the monotonous drone that became his anthem while he thought about how stupid everything was; how stupid he was, this plan was, how stupid Mello was and how stupid their lives were. He was starting to feel like one very angsty teenaged idiot by the time that the door creaked open, making him shut his eyes quickly like a young child who was evading the watchful eye of a parent. In truth, that was exactly what this maneuver had done for him in the past. Now, though, it just fooled Mello into thinking that he really had fallen asleep after all this time.

He felt gloved hands pulling his goggles off his head, and none too gently either. "Idiot. You break these and you wouldn't be able to see shit. God knows I wouldn't feel bad," he heard Mello mutter as his goggles clattered against the soda cans littered on the bedside table.

The bed depressed slightly as the blonde got onto it with him, far enough away that Matt could barely feel his warmth. For a moment, Matt contemplated feigning deep sleep and rolling over, perhaps to catch a glimpse of blonde hair, but decided that he didn't want to chance waking the lion. Finally, after what was apparently hours, Matt heard Mello's breathing slowly slip into an easy pattern, a slow, sleeping rhythm of in and out.

Inhale and exhale, breathe and surrender.

* * *

**AN: **slow slow slow updating... but i am doing it. Am attempting. It's just very slow in my mind right now. XD

it seems that our young men are being very moody-- but with a kidnap mission looming in the near future, I don't blame them.

I passed my license test today!

EDIT: rofl i said they were in japan and then i said they had yet to get there... phew... changed it.


	18. faster fraying: farther

_The future looks hazy from here._

It wasn't quite evening yet, but the sun was dwindling in a way that insinuated that nightfall was fast approaching. Mello was aimlessly conducting business on a laptop as usual, though this time perhaps more to busy his fingers than his mind. Much to his displeasure, the smell of nicotine was wafting about in the air around him, but he didn't want to break the silent treatment in order to tell the redhead to go smoke outside. It seemed, though, that Matt at least had the decency not to sit next to Mello and smoke.

Thirty minutes later, it was still as quiet as hell save for the buzzing of technology and wires alive around them. It was really starting to get on Mello's nerves—the constant glow of the laptops and the hum of the fans in them whirring, the static that filled his ears— "Matt, turn on the T.V."

"Why?"

"Because I say so. Turn it on."

"The remote's closer to you."

Mello snatched the remote from where it laid on the floor near his foot and promptly chucked it at the gamer sitting on the ragged seat across from him. It caught him neatly in the head; Mello had always had impeccable aim.

"Fuck!"

"Now it's closer to you."

"Mello, I don't know what the _fuck_ your problem is, but seriously; could you stop being a twitchy bitch?"

The blonde echoed the other's choice of names, raising a brow in disbelief. "What are you talking about? If I remember correctly, it was you who decided to run off yesterday. You've got no room to be calling me a twitchy anything."

Looking slightly annoyed but mostly defensive, Matt responded, "'Cause you were being a _dick_."

"So?"

"I didn't want to put up with it."

Mello growled, half wishing that there was something else nearby to throw at Matt. "So you're going to run every time you disagree with something I do?"

While this wasn't really true, Matt shrugged and answered, "Pretty much."

"Then I wonder why you're not halfway back to fuckin' Belgium right now."

Matt's expression twitched to some shade of nearly violent, but his usual composure held fast to him. While wasn't impassive like Near or calm like L, he had always had some recognizable calm quality about him, sort of like the stillness in the air before a great storm. "Do you want me to be?" he questioned finally, having taken a moment to collect himself so that he wouldn't snap at the other. He wanted to avoid another full-out argument as best as he could. It seemed that with their plans drawing so close to them, tempers were running high and taut.

There was a moment's more silence. Mello didn't seem to be contemplating his words, nor trying to hold his anger in. Instead, his face appeared near unreadable, his body still, his fingers moving in slow, idle circles on his knee as though he wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. "No," he replied, the word easily the slowest syllable Matt had ever heard. "I don't."

Again, the silence reigned prime. Then, "Do you still want the T.V. on?"

"No. It's fine."

"I can turn it on if you want."

"I said it's fine."

"They say that some people work better with background noi—"

Matt was quickly silenced by the crush of hot lips again his own. All of the sudden he was in a golden forest—a warm, golden forest in which he was tightly held and stuck and strangely comfortable trapped there. He opened his eyes wide, but still all he could see was lion hair.

"Sorry."

Mello sounded breathless, trying very hard to breathe evenly, as though he hadn't been affected. As though he hadn't just suddenly sprung across the beaten couch, as though he hadn't just seized his best friend and held him like a vice that swore never to let go.

"What was that?" Matt questioned, his lips still numb with the fire Mello kissed with. That part had always struck him off guard, there was always some kind of passion in Mello—not necessarily of a lusty sort; sometimes it was anger, sometimes it was frustration, concern. Today, Matt tasted… fright.

"Well, you always do it to me," the blonde pointed out as though this were a normal occurrence.

They looked at each other for a moment, seeming to size each other up. Mello, at least, seemed to be behaving in that way, watching Matt as though he was mentally daring the gamer to move. Matt, on the other hand, was curiously attending to the other, seeing if he would try the kiss again. He did.

This felt foreign. Awkward. Unlike the night that seemed so many years ago, their hands now didn't know where to be. Matt's fingertips rested uncertainly on Mello's thighs. Mello's hands clutched too controllingly at the back of Matt's neck and his shoulders. Their teeth seemed to get in the way, Mello's tongue in his mouth seemed like some untamable savage beast. He cooled it with words that only spread like a tiny ember on the other's lips. "We're crazy," he breathed, the words hardly audible.

"I know we are," Matt responded, the statement rebounding off of Mello's pale skin in a way that entranced him, like he could see it. He couldn't take his eyes off of the side of his friend's face. The sea of burned skin seemed to be like some ill-placed desert in this golden forest.

"Not for this, I mean."

"I know."

There was silence yet again, but this time it didn't remain powerful. It was leashed and controlled; Mello wanted it, Matt used it. There was silence because they weren't talking; they were far too busy elsewhere.

The elder pulled back, his fingers softened, his hold still rigid and uncomfortable, but now seeking something in the gentle curl of red hair gathered at the base of Matt's neck, pinned in unruly place by the strap of his goggles. Mello said nothing.

Matt was sure now that he tasted fear on Mello's kiss. The fire on his tongue wasn't anger or frustration today—it was confusion. "You're scared." He said this frankly, unafraid of what the other might think of this seeming accusation.

Mello at first seemed angry, but then annoyed. Then, the expression was infected with a touch of confusion and it all turned to ash. Dusty, gray ash that floated away in the warm breeze of their breaths. "And you're not?" Mello retorted by way of admitting it. He was scared. This could be the single largest thing that he'd done. This would either bring them as close as they could ever be to Kira, or kill them. Most times, he was liable to be overdramatic when saying things like that, but this was truly honest.

"I am," the other replied soundly, hardly easing Mello's nerves. "We'd be crazier not to be. It's kind of human, isn't it?" The words felt like pebbles that were too light, feeble and cracked, rolling from his lips.

Mello half backed down, reconsidered it, and slowly came to rest against Matt's chest, tentatively, like he thought that Matt might sink into oblivion if he came down too fast. His fingers were curled at the back of Matt's neck, at his shoulder. Matt's hands were placed on his waist like a teenaged boy with his first girlfriend. They sat in silence, washed out in the overwhelming whirr of the technology around them.

"We should go," Mello muttered shortly after a while of breathing in Matt's vest. Cinnamon and nicotine had never been so both disgusting and enticing. He found himself having to drag himself upwards, feeling as though there were rocks in his head that weighed him down. Though his full on contact with Matt had only been brief, he was so very tempted to lie back there, rewind time and spend a couple more hours doing absolutely nothing. He couldn't remember the last time his drive had ever wanted anything like that. And yet, somehow, he couldn't make it feel like going forward. His steps were forced, his hands reaching to take a gun were sluggish, his grip around the keys he handed to Matt was loose and uncommitted. Though he would never admit it, the plan now seemed like a mistake. He was second-guessing himself—but this was a feeling. A true in-his-body feeling spurred by something deeper than the present. He handed over the bulky firearm. "Smoke screen. Guards. You know," he stated, the blunt and chopped sentences feeling like unyielding cardboard in his mouth. Stale.

Matt took the keys and smoke contraption, weighing it oddly in his hand before he mustered a strange little smile. "Don't worry about it. I'll just pull the trigger and drive off. Flawless," he reassured, tucking the gun into the pocket of his vest where the butt hung out, threatening to make it fall. Mello eyed it rather warily. Nothing seemed to fit. Nothing seemed right. In the final hour of preparation, everything had seemed to suddenly fall apart like an unpredicted avalanche.

"Matt—"

"Mello. Shut it," Matt commanded with a laugh, knowing full well the risk of giving Mello a direct command, but he could see it in the elder's expression. Something was… off. He could risk defying convention just this once. He dared to lean forward and place the gentlest of kisses on his friend's lips, so soft it was not even a mere spark. "C'mon. Let's go. I'll see you in Nagano." There was a moment's hesitance. Then, Matt pressed his lips against Mello's again, breathing in his recycled air as he backed only millimeters away. He took in a deeper breath, wondering in that moment the truth of his words. Wondering then, how exactly he cared for Mello, how much, what they'd done, what they had committed themselves to, what they would do after this, how they had to continue, what did all these half-assed and fiery kisses mean for them. He wondered and questioned and the answers didn't even nag at them. They flew farther and farther away and he couldn't chase them because he had a mission.

He walked to the door and for a moment, Mello watched him go. Then, he followed in the gamer's footsteps, feeling as though he was finally letting someone else take the lead. An uncomfortable feeling welled up in his chest and he briskly strode to the threshold first, elbowing his companion out of the way with a wicked sort of smile that read both of humour and sheer terror.

"See you in Nagano."

**AN: **Long time no see my friends. (: Thanks for those of you who still keep up with this, I really appreciate the reviewing. Though my long absence may state otherwise, I do appreciate what feedback I get and it does compel me to continue. I could give you the usual slew of excuses, but I'll spare you.

The next chapter should be the last one.

If you think I broke character, sorry. But personally, I'd get a little whacked out on the inside if I were about to go and pull some shit like this. XD


	19. salvation

_I can't let go._

_  
_With the window partially cracked and the air in his car calm and hazy with nicotine, Matt almost felt as though he was embarking on the beginning of some great adventure. Maybe, in some way, he was. Despite the radio being on and spewing things in Japanese that he only half-understood, everything seemed eerily quiet. Unattached. All he could feel was the anticipation churning like a storm inside of him, the voice in his head yearning for something to hold it all down. Something to keep the monsters at bay, to keep his mind in place. He tried to shake it off. There was a job to do and in this crucial hour, he couldn't fail Mello.

Traffic started to thicken as he approached the NHN headquarters. Areas of the street were blocked off and people bottlenecked on the sidewalk like insects. He inhaled deeply though the filter of his cigarette, feeling almost like it was protecting him. He didn't know why, particularly, but today the world seemed dangerous. There was only him, smoking and his car—and Mello, somewhere in the distance.

Camera bulbs flashing threatened momentary disorientation for anyone standing too close, but Matt was about to disorient them further. He reached to the otherwise empty passenger seat and took the gun that Mello had given him into his hand, wielding its bulk with considerable diligence. Resting its barrel against his car door, pointing beyond the open window, he fired a single shot to the first open area he saw. Screams erupted from the crowd—briefly, he saw a head of blonde hair crouch over Takada—Hal Lidner? He lingered for a second, waiting—his breath held tightly in his lungs until he heard and saw the motorcycle that Mello had gotten on just earlier. Job done, he threw the gun aside and floored it, whirling his wheel around to turn the nearest corner as Lidner deployed Takada's guards behind him.

Adrenaline immediately flooded his veins, making his head pound. He gripped his cigarette in his teeth, the taste of it bitter and real, tying him to this moment, this particular place in time as the world flew by in an unnatural pace around him. He vaguely wondered if Mello had achieved his ends, but quickly shook the thought off. Of course. It was Mello, so of course he had done what he had set to do. Of course.

Skidding around a corner, Matt slammed the brakes to force the car into a stop, swerving in a messy arc on the pavement to avoid a head-on collision with the sleek black cars that had cut him off at the intersection ahead. "Shit," he muttered to himself, quickly weighing his options. Still, Takada's guard closed in on him, completely blockading anything that even slightly _resembled_ an exit. He swallowed. Shit. "How many fucking guards does she have?" This did not look good. This did not feel good—not in the slightest, remotest way did this seem positive. The only thing he could think to do was attempt to talk his way into custody to stay alive long enough to think of a better plan.

Steeling himself and getting out of the car against his better judgment, Matt inhaled through the cigarette and tried his damndest to execute the perfect picture of nonchalance, speaking in a manner that seemed utterly rehearsed in his effort to sound calm. "You really shouldn't shoot me, you know," he started in a sort of genial manner, his voice sounding overly casual. It was difficult in the face of all those hidden eyes staring at him,, the barrels of those guns trained on him. One false move and he'd be riddled with holes from every direction. _God._ Matt had never prayed before, but he vaguely remembered… back when he had first found Mello in that wreck, the senseless babble that had come from the blonde's mouth…

"_And Matt… I was scared, Matt… I knew I had to make it… But God… only if God was on my side." _

Matt's breathing felt shallow, like his lungs were made of unforgiving metal. _God, for fuck's sake, please…_ _for him._ "I can give you information on Takada's kidnapper," he stated; while it wasn't a lie, it was something that he _wouldn't_ do, even though he _could_. He opened his mouth to try a couple more charming words, but the start of a syllable quickly became a ghost on his tongue.

Pain.

This was pain. Unimaginable pain—pain like a tiny monster ripping through his body. This monster was quickly joined by friends that bore into his chest, into his lungs, tearing through his muscles. A breath lingered in his throat as he fell back against his car, his trembling fingertips half-raised against his abdomen. Fuck.

Matt exhaled slowly, the world falling to ruins beyond the edges of his vision. No.

_God. _

No.

He clenched his fingers into a fist—or at least, tried. His brain had seemed to sever connection to his body in a last ditch effort to save him from the unbearable, searing pain that coursed through his torso—it knew that this was the end.

No.

But then there was no pain. There was no warmth, no cold. There was just him, him and the world that turned to gray ash around him, him and his thoughts, just Matt… and that was all. This was it, then. "Sorry, Mel'…" the redhead whispered to himself, the last syllable causing the still-lit cigarette to fall from his dry lips as he tried, tried so hard to remember the taste of Mello's kiss… the way things would have been if only…

… if only…

_God, save Mihael._

_--_

There was no prayer.

Despite the cross hanging around his neck and how his fingers itched to touch it, to caress it to count across it to pray and to hope and hold—god he hadn't felt this way in such a long time—but he ignored it. There was a mission, there was this girl, there was this speed. There was Matt waiting for him, there was Nagano. There was a plane and there was a future—there was no time for praying in the present.

The truck felt foreign beneath his fingertips, the clothes on his person a little too lose. They didn't belong to him, they weren't the familiar caress of leather. This seat was a little too tall, the back of the truck too quiet. Everything still felt wrong. The engine was too noisy, too old and clunky. Mello took a breath. God. Everything seemed…

He shook the thoughts off—it wasn't like him to think like this. He was supposed to be level-headed and right, everything was going to work out because this was his plan. This was his plan that he had tried so hard to perfect, and god damn it all, it was. It had to be. The alternative to perfection was… He swallowed. No, he couldn't think about that.

Reaching to the television built into the console, Mello flicked through the channels until he found the Japanese news. He could only understand fleeting bits of it, but the noise of the old speakers was a slight comfort to him, something to focus on, some bit of the real world outside of this truck. The news was alight with Takada's kidnapping. It seemed that nothing else was of interest—he couldn't blame them.

He gave the screen a brief glance—an intersection, a car.

A body.

His heart jolted. The name rose to his tongue but wilted behind his lips—he couldn't say it. No.

It was hard to breathe.

His fingers were shaking.

The blonde pulled over, stared intently at the television's tiny screen, groping for words he knew. They were saying that the man in the car had tried to pull a gun on them—but he knew that was a lie. That was a lie, Matt hadn't been carrying a gun but the smoke screen, and even then… he wasn't so foolish.

He gritted his teeth together. "Fuck, I'm sorry…" he whispered, feeling as though his words were glass that cut the roof of his mouth, tore apart his tongue in saying it. But he had to. He had to admit it—it was… his fault… "I got you killed… Matt." He wanted to say the other's name—his friend's name. He couldn't deny it; Matt was the best friend he'd ever had, possibly the only real friend. Someone who had stayed with him all this time, who had hunted him out, who had sought his company when he had adamantly disagreed… But the strange syllable wouldn't leave him. It clung to his throat until he swallowed it again where a throb in his chest made him swore that he felt it stay with him. Matt's name—his friend. It wouldn't leave him.

The throbbing happened again. His heart felt strange. Heavy. Like stone.

He felt as though someone had reached into his chest and squeezed the muscle. Was this grief? Was this what it was like to mourn someone that you had not looked up to, as he had L, but someone who had stood by your side? He swallowed.

No. This was different.

He gripped the wheel, leaned forward over it. This was… death. He could taste it. That bitch. That tremendous bitch…

A laugh escaped his lips, a dry laugh that died shortly after it came into being. That whore… how did she know what he wanted?

He closed his eyes. His goal was so far away. Miles and miles and miles—and Near, where the fuck was Near? Near was where his goal was—far so far away… Miles away… But Mello knew that it would be over soon. Near would finish their game. The three of them, the brilliant Wammy orphans, they would win. Near would owe them. He wanted to be the best, he wanted… so much to be number one… but that figure by his side that had always been there, even when he had tried so hard to push him away… He had always been like a shadow, even if he was a few steps behind. But now he wasn't there. What use would it be to stand at the end without him?

Mello laid his head against the wheel, his gaze unfocused on the other side of the car. If only… if only things had been different. If only Matt had lived, if only they had chosen a different route, a different plan. If only L hadn't died… There was so much to wish for, but there was only one thing Mello wanted.

Matt was so close, he could feel the other's body heat. He could feel the warmth of those hands on his shoulders, the smell of nicotine that he had so claimed to despise, but had been secretly comforted by… the taste of those faults so close, the flaws that they had shared and loved in their own, twisted way…

Matt was so close.

For the briefest moment, he thought that he could see heaven. But there was no God, no one to pray to, no one to answer his prayers. There was a hand, a familiar hand that was slightly calloused with fingers outreached to him. He wanted to take the hand, but it was so hard to lift his own. There was a pressing whiteness all around him, it was hard to breathe. It was hard for his heart to beat, his heart that was now a stone, a dead stone… And suddenly, he didn't need to breathe anymore. He stretched his fingers to the hand that reached for him, brushing against the fingertips before he slipped.

No… No—he wanted it. He wanted that hand; he wanted it more than anything. More than he had wanted to be number one, more than he wanted to beat Near. He wanted that hand—but fuck, he was slipping away—no—

But the hand reached for him.

The fingers took hold of his palm and grasped tight, pulling closer. He heard the whisper, a slightly familiar voice that seemed from a time long ago, a time when they were just children.

_God, save Mihael…_

The hand took him closer, took hold of him. The hand became an arm, an arm that was attached to a body, a body that smelled of nicotine.

There was a heartbeat. Soft, like a dull lullaby lost ages ago.

_God, save Mihael…_

But he didn't need to be saved. He had everything he wanted.

* * *

**AN:** I know I deviated from the script in the manga/anime, but I like it better this way. It's easier to use sort of my own words, from what I remember of the moment, then to replicate what someone else translates they're saying.

So... that's it. Thanks to everyone who stuck with me this long (two years and only 36,137 words to show for it, sad, isn't it?). I lost a lot of motivation after the series ended and Madi and I stopped RPing so much, but this fic always kind of stuck with me. I like it a lot, I'm proud of it, and mostly, what kept me going was the knowledge that other people enjoyed what I wrote and wanted to read it. So thanks, guys. All those reviews that you sent-- I made an effort to reply to every one of them. If I didn't, I'm sorry, feel free to shoot me up with a PM if you want to say anything. (:

HEY IF YOU READ THIS CHAPTER REVIEW IT.

JUST SAY SOMETHING. ANYTHING. LIKE 'LSDKJFAS;LFA' WILL DO.

I'm just curious as to how many people made it to the end. (: If anyone you know reads this fic, please let them know that I finished. I completed the fic because I owed it to everyone who started it, no matter how much they liked or didn't like it. So that's the end of my speech.

Bottom line: thank you very much. Love you all. (: Thank you especially to Madi, whom I really started this fic for.


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